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IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 



y \fjdLcL&A*i t A • E , 

IN CLAY AND IN 
BRONZE 

A STUDY IN PERSONALITY 

BY 

BRINSLEY MACNAMARA i 



NEW YORK 
BRENTANO’S 

PUBLISHERS 

Crj^ & 


V ' t 



Copyright, 1920, by 
BRENTANO’S 


All rights reserved 


MADE IN U. S. A. 


NOV 1 8 1920 ''' 
§)CI, A617000 



TO THE MEMORY 
OF M. 





BOOK I 


v 


V 





—THE PEASANT 




IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


BOOK I 

THE PEASANT 

I 

T HE gloom of the March evening was beginning to 
creep in over the land as Martin Duignan unyoked 
his horses from the plough and, coming out through a 
narrow gap where the mud slushed up about his boots, 
entered the long boreen which led to his mother’s 
house. He walked with head downcast like the horses 
who pounded along doggedly, the dirty hair of their 
fetlocks falling down over their clay-encrusted hoofs. 
The two horses and the man were beating a broken re- 
treat before the forces of the Earth. This was the life of 
the horses and the life of him who had to work like a 
horse — their sudden, brave effort of the morning, the 
long furrows and the sun in their faces and the rise 
of the hill. Then the ending — to stumble home like 
this when the night was falling down and creeping in 
over Glannanea. 

Yet upon this very evening it might be that there 
was some kind of a dream shining in the mind of Martin 
Duignan. There seemed to be something in him that 
the clay had not yet subdued and it came thus to life 
when the labour of the fields was done. As he took his 
way so quietly now by the old churchyard of Glannanea 
a little shudder passed through his frame. He could 


2 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


never forget when as a boy he had passed there after 
the great storm of 1903 and seen where even the graves 
of the dead had been broken, for the fallen trees had 
uprooted the yellow skulls of some long dead kinsmen, 
and that near by a frightened ewe had died in giving 
birth to her two lambs. . . The place had always 
looked so lonely in the fading light. He was past the 
age when the tales of old cronies could have effect and 
make him suddenly fearful, but for him there had 
always lingered something of terror in the aspect of 
the tombstones. For often, while he was in the fields, 
the chapel bell of Glannidan would ring out and a little 
later down this way he would see the poor coffin 
borne. . . It was the funeral of some old man whose 
existence people had scarcely noticed, some ancient, 
maybe, who had died as he leaned upon his stick looking 
into the forge fire of an evening. . . At such times 
and as now a passage from a poem would come into 
his mind: 

“Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap 
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.” 

It was something he remembered clearly from his 
scanty schooldays. That and Goldsmith’s poem of 
The Deserted Village. Sometimes he would see the 
churchyard of Glannanea enlarged beyond the little 
stir of beauty the lines of the poem would cause in his 
mind. Then a curious regret and a dumb longing to 
know more would come to him, and he would pause, 
whether at his labour in the fields or on his way home 
down the boreen, to wonder, the horses looking at him 
pityingly with their big eyes. . . 

Now after a few lapses of this kind Martin came 


THE PEASANT 


3 


into the wide untidy yard before the long, low thatched 
house where he lived with his mother and sister. Mary 
Duignan came out of the house to look proudly upon 
her horses. It was not every woman in the townland 
who could say she was mistress of two horses, although 
it was only quite recently that they had been able to 
purchase the second. She was a fine woman, remark- 
able with pride in the possession of land. This was 
how she would strike one as she came out of her own 
house, her bosom great before her in the twilight. . . 

From beneath her apron she took a bottle of holy 
water with which it was her evident intention to be- 
sprinkle the horses’ drink and feed and bedding, so that 
they might remain alive and strong to labour on the 
morrow. This was a precaution taken in the hope of 
averting a calamity which sometimes happened in the 
townland of Glannanea, a scourge which sometimes 
came and swept away a man’s cattle and horses and 
sheep. Many years before a curse had been put upon 
the place by a holy priest who was here scandalised 
and silenced. It seemed a very terrible thing that the 
poor, dumb, patient beasts should be made to suffer 
from generation to generation for something that had 
once been said about a holy man to satisfy the hunger 
of lying tongues. It was a great punishment. The 
death of one of their Christian selves did not appear 
half so terrible since their inherent belief in their own 
holiness vouchsafed eternal glory to the dear departed. 
But the death of one of their beasts smote them with a 
sickening, awful feeling of loss. It was an event which 
denied them even the satisfaction of a certain mournful, 
morbid pride that was the constant comfort of hearing 
the priest reading out during the interval at Mass— 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


4 

“Your prayers are requested for the repose of the soul 

of There was something which always stirred 

them in the public announcement of the deceased’s 
name. And there might also be the accompanying 
satisfaction of bragging about the cost of the solid, 
brass-mounted coffin or the amount of whiskey that 
the mourners had drunk at the wake. . . Even nothing 
like this as the outcome of the curse, but just the dead 
beast in the field or stable with the dew of death upon 
its eyes and a few men muttering something about 
“the will of God.” The digging of the grave in a 
lonely quarter of the bit of land and the journey to 
Glannidan for a sup of drink to help them forget. . . 
Later the thick, enclosing gloom as they sat in some 
dark corner of the widow Kelly’s pub, drinking a pint 
or two while people were whispering all round: 

“The poor, unfortunate crew, sure they’re after 
burying their grand mare this evening, bad luck to the 
lie in it.” 

In the light of all this it did not seem strange that 
Mary Duignan should be anxious about her horses. 
She was troubled by a double annoyance now since 
they had purchased the second. . . She bent down and 
felt their hard, sinewy forelegs in turn; then rising 
drew her hand alternately along their sweaty, shiny 
flanks. 

“The poor things!” she said. 

Martin felt hurt. The horses were more to his mother 
than her only son. . . Such moments were frequent 
in his life. They reached his flicker of emotion always 
as he passed the churchyard of Glannanea and seemed 
to tell that there existed in his breast some subtle 
quality which separated him from the clay. And yet 


THE PEASANT 


S 


how very obediently he had taken to the land upon the 
death of his father? He had been doing the will of 
the household since he was sixteen, ploughing, mucking 
daily in the clay, tending cattle, mowing, tramping to 
distant fairs. They had prospered as a result of his 
industry. Yet he had stood in a somewhat 
different relation to life. His father, Arthur Duignan 
had had a certain amount of enlightenment beyond 
his station. When in his cups, which was often, he 
would speak of the fine future he had planned for his 
boy, Martin, of education and position and the fine 
life of cities . . . and, after all, this was the result 
of that ambition and just now his life had narrowed 
down, a smattering of National Education that was 
of no use to him even as a farmer, the eternal clay 
and his poor life in a thatched house with crooked 
walls and little windows near the village of Glannidan. 

His head was bent low over his plate as he went on 
with the half cold supper of potatoes and milk he had 
taken from the ashes. There was little attendance 
or consideration for him in this house. But his attention 
was now all for the meal before him. He must be just 
like the horses, he thought, who were now rapidly 
munching their hay while his own mother patted their 
necks and whispered affectionately into their ears. . . 
At last she came in. 

“Is Brigid in Glannidan this evening?” he inquired, 
without lifting his head. 

“She is then.” 

“She’s getting to be damnable flighty, that one.” 

“Musha sure she only went for a few wants. She’ll 
be back in no time for she brought the bicycle.” 

“Aye, the bicycle!” 


6 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


“Aye, indeed!” 

“A bicycle and fine dresses and an accent, I thank 
ye, when she meets some jackeen in Glannidan. But 
what about me, mother dear? I’m only able to 
show myself there after dark. But I’m not much of a 
character don’t ye know? Brigid, of course, is a great 
beauty and has to be abroad in the daylight.” 

“Well, and sure hasn’t a poor girl to make the most 
of herself just like a man? Sure you make the most of 
yourself out there in the fields!” 

“Aye!” 

“You’re a hard son, Martin. Just as your father 
was a hard husband. A very reckless man who spent 
the most of his time in the widow Kelly’s. Ah, dear- 
a-dear, sure he left little provision for any of us, only 
the bit of land. Your poor little sister that looks so 
elegant when she’s dressed up. God only knows but 
it’s to Austin Fagan, the Clerk of the Union, she’ll be 
getting married to yet, your little sister.” 

“My little sister! I’m thinking of my end of the 
story.” 

“Well, give her her fortune and she won’t be bothering 
you here.” 

“And where would I get a fortune for her in the name 
of God?” 

“Now if you were to get married, Martin! I’m sure 
you’d be well able to command a fine gerrl with a nice 
penny, and not a lassie like Lucy Flynn, the one you 
do be after.” 

“You’re a smart woman, mother.” . . . 

It was only after such a talk with his mother that 
Martin began to feel the dumb stirrings of his 
own will and a kind of craving flow into his heart 


THE PEASANT 


7 


and brain. Such were times when he felt some touch 
of another ability, something that already raised him 
beyond the tillers of the soil. . . 

This diversion of his thought was interrupted by the 
entry of Brigid. She came into the smoky kitchen 
wheeling her bright bicycle and a look of disdain sped 
across her face as she observed the loutish figure of 
Martin, sitting there with his head bowed upon his bent 
arm, as he began to brood so sullenly upon the purpose 
of his life. She had just been speaking with Austin 
Fagan and the immediate sense of contrast between 
her brother and the Clerk of the Union was still present 
in her mind. 

Austin Fagan was a constant figure of admiration 
in Glannidan. He was before all else a ladies’ man, 
a fellow who wore kid gloves, smoked expensive cigar- 
ettes and patronized dogs and horses. He was vastly 
contemptuous of such as Martin Duignan. He spoke 
with a sneer of their corduroy breeches, although they 
paid the rates out of which he was paid. Often in the 
long, heavy period of the day a motor bicycle would 
dash down the road from Glannidan and fervent curses 
would rise out of the fields. 

“There’s Austin Fagan; the curse of hell on him! 
He must have a quare laugh at the likes of us working 
like this to make a gentleman of the likes of him!” 

And one night Martin had seen him giggling with 
Brian Doyle, the reporter for the Ballycullen Gazette 
outside Whelehan’s public house. They were looking 
over a packet of postcards. Just a short while before 
Martin had seen them talking to his sister Brigid a 
little way up the street. . . As the two grand young 
men passed off into the dusk still grinning, Martin 


8 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


saw that one of the postcards had slipped from the 
packet and looked filthy there upon the lamplit gutter 
of the street. He picked it up and remained a long 
time gazing upon it. . . 

Just now his mother came rushing down from the 
bedroom where she had gone to speak a word to Brigid. 
She appeared excited. 

“D’ye know what, Martin? Brigid is after being 
invited to the St. Patrick’s night dance in Glannidan 
by no less than two young men! ” 

“Begad!” 

“By William Moore and Austin Fagan. Of course 
you know William is the makings of a great match for 
any girl. His ould father is rotten with money. But 
me bould Brigid is doing the right thing when its with 
Austin she intends to go. There’s no use in letting 
William think too soon that I’m going to put her after 
his money. Musha, won’t it be the great night entirely 
she’ll have and isn’t it the grand comfort to me to think 
that I have a daughter so accomplished and so lucky 
and so wise! Arrah, sure, you never could know the 
grand piece of good fortune she’d be bringing in here 
upon this very floor some day!” 

“The devil a know you know,” said Martin doggedly, 
as he rose from his chair and lurched awkwardly out 
of the house. 


THE PEASANT 


9 


II 

M ARTIN had been thinking of a smoke with the 
little comfort that it brought and a curious turn 
of reserve here manifested itself. It was part of the 
usual attitude of a son to a parent in this part of the 
world. A young man might come home drunk from 
a fair and use primitive language in the hearing of his 
mother. But he would never dare to smoke his pipe 
in her presence. The same young man might take 
drink for drink with his father in a public house and 
enter into the general blasphemy of the place, but he 
would go out into the yard to light his pipe. 

Now, therefore, that Martin had moved out of the 
presence of his mother he leaned across the boreen 
gate pulling at his pipe in keen enjoyment and listening. 
He could hear the sound of men coming from their 
labour down all the distant boreens, but this sound 
came to be replaced gradually by the heavy tramp, 
tramp of nailed brogues down all the road into Glan- 
nidan. There was an eager look upon the faces that 
went by, burning out through the dusk as they went 
down the road. It was no portion of Martin’s existence 
yet, somehow, it appeared as a comfort to the others 
as they went on to the pubs at the end of the day. 
They were not like him, despondent, weary, but men 
with a purpose in life hurrying erectly along the road. 
Their pipes too were alight, and left a dense fog of smoke 
behind them. They seemed to be smoking in ecstasy 
as if to produce that very thirst which was burning 
from their tongues down into their very hearts. Soon 


10 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


they would be drinking and talking as they stood by 
the wet counters in the stinking pubs of Glannidan 
while a great forgetfulness came upon them, a horrible 
prelude to swinish sleep. 

“There must be something in it after all,” he would 
say, but a few hours later he would be convinced of 
its emptiness as he listened to them stuttering homeward 
in utter degradation, bawling songs which shuddered 
away beneath the moon into the dark stillness of the 
bog. And as he listened to these sounds of their return 
he would have just spent the evening with Lucy Flynn. 

Lucy represented the bit of excitement which kept 
him from Glannidan in the evenings. Step by step 
they had been driven inevitably into this comradeship 
of one another. His father, Arthur Duignan, had made 
Glannidan a place of dread in the household, and one 
to which his steps should not turn. Her father, 

Henry Flynn, angry with his wife that she had not 
borne him a son, had turned to warp the mind of his 
daughter towards a mannish love for the land pro- 
ducing something unnatural in a body that had some 
show of comeliness, a girl who talked about cattle and 
the crops and went through the fields like no female 
to observe the fruiting of the earth. Even about 

Glannidan it was as natural for a man to be a drunkard 
as for a girl to be vain of her skin and hair and anxious 
to buy pretty, flowered hats to adorn herself from 

Esther Gilligan, the milliner. But the mind of Lucy 
Flynn was all upon land and upon Martin Duignan, 
because he had a bit of land. Continually their con- 
versation turned curiously: 

“How much did yous get for the black heifer at 

Bally cullen fair?” 


THE PEASANT n 

“Twenty-four ten was what my father held out for 
and got.” 

“By hell, I wouldn’t doubt you!” 

“She was a fine baste to grow up from a bit of a 
calf that was bought from a dealer.” 

“How’s the turnips doing with yous this season?” 

“Middling, middling, the devil a more!” 

“But the praties is doing well, I suppose.” 

“Now d’ye know what I’m going to tell you, there’s 
nothing like the new seed!” 

“The devil a thing. . . Come out here across the 
hedge, Lucy, and give me a court!” 

“Indeed then I won’t. I have a pig’s pot to boil 
yet, and then mebbe I’d have to stay up a part of the 
night for the white cow’s time was up a week ago.” 

They would often part there and then without another 
word beyond this outburst of agricultural tenderness, 
and Martin would take another way through Glannidan 
while the night was still young. Sometimes he would 
peer in through the windows at the men drinking by 
the wet counters. . . He would guess from the looks 
on their faces that they were talking of the land. It 
was the crude magic of the land that held them all 
through the day and even now, in their hour of lesiure, 
they could not let it out of their minds. But, as Martin 
glimpsed those looks beyond the windows, his mind 
would return to the comfort of Lucy Flynn. She too 
was always talking of the land, but one night he had 
crossed a gate between their fields and kissed her 
fiercely upon the wet, red lips. Then he had looked 
quietly upon her face and had felt a kind of gladness 
from gazing upon it so soft and white amid the green 
fields, . . 


12 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


This was the little dream which lit his mean life in 
Glannanea, but he had never a thought that his dream 
might merge into reality. Sometimes this sense of 
impossibility would crush in upon him with such strength 
that he would turn away from the windows of Glannidan 
in search of other comfort. He found it generally in 
the little crowd of girls who passed after nightfall down 
the secluded ways leading out of Glannidan, with their 
hair down their backs in rich, shining plaits. They 
would smile up into his face as they went by or across 
their shoulders after they had gone past him. He would 
steal after them, often for long distances down the 
roads, yet always without speaking to them or entering 
into their company. Their rich young bodies moving 
gladly on their shapely limbs, the velvet whiteness 
of their skin against the velvet darkness of the night; 
the music of their young, pleasant voices when they 
sang snatches of old songs, the cloudy impression which 
their moist red lips made upon him when they smiled, 
the wounding magic of their eyes; all these seemed to 
melt his very being into a helpless wonder. . . 


THE PEASANT 


13 


III 

I F there was little change in Martin’s condition 
from day to day his sister moving towards the 
realisation of her beauty seemed to represent an advance 
in the adventures of the household. The Spring was 
flowing in over Glannanea, and as he went his way now 
the boreen down to the tillage fields was arched loftily 
by the morning sky and the world was always a great, 
windy mass of illumination. There was a hush, as if 
of wonder, upon the gray stone walls that stretched 
away into the sleeping fields. A new day was rising 
into strength like a giant coming out of his bed with 
long, balmy yawns. . . To Martin there always 
appeared a fine feeling of pleasure in leaving the house 
when the fresh, blue smoke was like a pencil mark 
against the fleecy sky. There was something of per- 
petual wonder in thus hurrying forth to meet the day. 
He was heavy of gait and heavy of look, and to all 
outward seeming he had no great stir of thought in 
his mind as he went down to the fields. Through a 
break in the trees he could always see where the newly 
turned earth was fresh and red. . . At intervals he 
would meet people upon the way, drovers, tramps and 
men of pride and substance. The men of cattle did 
not seem to dislike this young man who wore the appear- 
ance of a farmer. They would stop to talk with Martin 
of their cattle and the prospect of the prices at Bally- 
cullen fair, while about them stretched far away the 
level, lifeless fields. 

“Well, begad, ’tis a grand day!” 


14 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


“Begad, ’tis a grand day!” 

Now and again he would meet a girl going to the well, 
the sunlight catching the tin of her can like a mirror 
and making a little bright dancing spot before her. 
At this hour of the morning her hair would be loosely 
pinned. The lack of a corset would show in the hang 
of her cotton dress as it fell around her like a Greek 
garment. She was surely a farmer’s daughter and 
the wife of a farmer in the making, and later on some 
quiet evening in the winter she would be sold into 
slavery from her father’s house. The word would 
have gone abroad that she was a “great worker” — 
this going to the well so ostentatiously was part of her 
endeavour for a reputation. So also was the feeding 
of pigs outside her father’s door on the morning of a 
fair in Ballycullen or when people would be passing 
the road in throngs. Then the old women who went 
the rounds of the houses would drop an observation 
like this in many a place: 

“Begad, she’s a great worker!” 

“Is that so, begad?” 

“She’d make a bloody fine wife for a man!” 

“She’s up at six in the morning and feeds a power 
of pigs. Why she’d be nearly as good as a man in the 
house. D’ye know what I’m going to tell you now? 
Sure a lassie like that’d make up a man in a couple of 
year.” 

Then the inevitable sequel to this talk — the girl 
herself hearing that a match for her was coming along 
in a week or two betaking herself to her room to dream 
over the beauty of her body and to read the letters 
that had once been sent her by a good-looking shop- 
boy in Dublin. And then, her thought upon the mar- 


THE PEASANT 


i5 

riage that was coming, so disgusting and loveless. 
When she had done many a thing that had gone to 
build up her reputation of being a “great worker” 
there had been a queer pain in her heart. . . Then there 
was the visit to the house of the man to whom she was 
to give her life; that dark dramatic coming in the winter 
evening, somewhat drunk and bringing a bottle of 
whiskey as the passport. . . There would be tea or 
the drinking of the whiskey in the musty, unfrequented 
parlour. After a satisfactory discussion of the fortune 
her father and mother would be sure to excuse them- 
selves and leave her alone with “himself” to be. . . 
And then the little vision of her life would narrow down 
so quickly just as she broke from the room. In a mad 
moment of rebellion she thought of herself, not as the 
girl with the great reputation as a worker, but as the 
girl who had once seen her own beauty in the fact 
that she had been sent love-letters by a shop-boy in 
Dublin, broken ere her time with the labour of the fields 
and the labour of child-bearing, her husband maybe 
turned to beating her when he had brought about the 
desolation of all she had once possessed — the children 
born of lust and not of love springing up around them. 

It was strange that in these occasional glimpses 
Martin should be meeting a certain heavy gloom of 
life upon the morning road. In the turn of his imagina- 
tion there lingered a thought of Lucy Flynn. It was 
queer to think if he would not bring her some lovely 
years before the end. But what might he ever be but 
a great, big clod of a farmer? Already was he beginning 
to hang the jowl of one, and Lucy had won the reputa- 
tion of being a “great worker,” although many a time 
he had seen her with a dark weariness about her eyes. 


i6 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


But there was his sister, Brigid. She seemed to be 
going down a different road, but it too was a road of 
morning. She had more beauty than most other 
girls of Glannidan or Glannanea, but she had no fortune 
and had not even made her reputation as a worker. 
But there were wise women who said that they had 
known of the like of her making a good match, even 
marrying, I thank ye, beyond her class. This was 
viewed as an enormous social offence in the locality, 
but the sufferings of Mary Duignan during the lifetime 
of her husband somewhat excused her ambition although 
it had brought about this clash between her son and 
her daughter. Yet she could never help feeling a flame 
of pride leap through her, its glow lighting up her pale 
cheeks, when she saw Brigid setting forth upon her 
shining bicycle to idle away the evening in Glannidan. 
She would have spent the whole forenoon adorning 
herself, never so much as lifting a hand to help in the pre- 
paration of Martin’s dinner when he came in sweating 
from the fields. Her selfish attitude had once put 
him into such a rage that he had broken the looking- 
glass before which he had found her tittivating herself. 
He had been sorry a second later, and his mother had 
said so mournfully: 

“Now isn’t that a shame for you, Martin, to go do 
that to your little sister Brigid, and she so fond of you. 
To go break a looking-glass, why you’ll have no luck 
for seven years, and that’s as sure as you’re there.” 

She appeared a fine lady coming into Glannidan 
round the sweep of the hill past the door of the forge, 
the grimy blacksmiths running out to look at her as 
she went by and saying: 

“Indeed I don’t wonder at Austin Fagan taking 


THE PEASANT 


i7 

a fancy to her. Damn it, but she’s a sweet cut of a 
lassie!” 

Into Corrigan’s she would go, for the paper probably, 
buying a novelette, not that she intended to read it, 
but just for the excuse of buying something. Miss 
Agnes Corrigan would come out of the mouldy room 
where she spent the time reading the novelettes, which 
she sold later for a penny or threepence each, and as she 
came out to attend a customer there would seem to 
linger about her a subtle aroma of romance, a fragrant 
essence, the scent of the conversation lozenges she had 
just been chewing with her decayed teeth mingling 
with the scent of the “parma-de-violets” she sold at a 
penny a bottle. As she stood there gabbing, her 
pince-nez hung upon her breast by a gold chain, she 
would be speaking the nicest words out of books in the 
broad accent of county Meath. . . She was one of the 
few people in Glannidan who were possessed of a definite 
purpose in life, and girls flocked to her as to some 
mistress of an art. She initiated them into the ways 
of courtship and flirtation. Whenever she heard of 
such and such a girl having anything to do with a certain 
man she became eloquent in her advice. She told the 
girl things about men, queer things that were not to 
be found in books. . . 

For Brigid, after her visit to Miss Corrigan, there 
were a few words to be passed with Esther Gilligan, 
the milliner, who lived behind a wide window in the 
very middle of Glannidan. She had grown old and 
loveless but she still took a great interest in the romance 
of the neighbourhood. She could give a “quare cut” 
to any girl if she became aware of her settled designs 
on any man, and out of the bitterness of her disappointed 


i8 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

heart she would speak with an impassioned bluntness. 
Then there was the visit to the Post Office, the old woman 
there exercising a kind of lure or fascination towards 
the persecution of her presence. 

And later some lout of Glannidan shouting some 
absurd piece of slang as she swung homeward into the 
shadows of the evening only to find on reaching the 
house her brother looking at her so sullenly across the 
table, the crude mess of his evening meal broken roughly 
before him. 


THE PEASANT 


19 


IV 

T HERE was something very notable about a dance 
in Glannidan. It was at once a concentration 
of life and an opportunity to express criticism of life. 
People were drawn to it by their love of talk merely that 
they might be the better tormented by the talk that 
came out of it. Seeing that a dance was something 
to which each person contributed, it was only natural to 
think that each person would partake to some degree 
of its results, and so it was always. 

Even old Anastasia Hennessy, who never did a hand’s 
turn before God but tramping from one house to another 
and prating about Glannidan, would say as a young 
girl passed her door next day: 

“There she is now, and wasn’t she the great little 
swell last night with all her fine gee-gaws and her nice 
little clothes upon her, and will you look at her now, 
the dirty little faggot, with the holes in the heels of 
her dirty stockings!” 

This was portion of the jubilant talk expressing 
reality of vision which succeeded the dance, but the 
beginning of the dance in a murmur of talk was like 
the beginning of a dream. And here was a fact that 
was sometimes announced in a mood of prophecy and 
doom. There never was a dance yet but something 
happened at it or after it, something “quare.” 

Brigid Duignan was going to the St. Patrick’s Day 
dance in Glannidan — and her mother was anxious now 
with a great anxiety for the future of her daughter. 
Martin was growing more and more morose. Some- 


20 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


thing that had been hidden in him was creeping fuller 
and fuller into life. It reminded Mary Duignan of her 
dead husband, Arthur Duignan, and so she was begin- 
ning to be troubled even as she had been troubled 
during the lifetime of Arthur. There were evenings 
now when he came home from the tillage field before 
the ringing of the Angelus and sat long before the fire 
without a word coming from him. . . Arthur Duignan 
in pursuit of his general uselessness had filled many 
of the small rooms of the house with books. Long ago, 
when they had been prosperous, when she had just 
come to Glannanea with her fine fortune, Arthur had 
had business then on Thursdays in the cattle market 
at Dublin. . . She could still picture his setting out 
to that place, with his wide tie of rich silk wound about 
his collar and his half-tall hat, starting for the railway 
station at Tubbermoyle or Ballycullen, promising her 
that he would not touch a drop this time, and she 
standing at the door viewing him go down the road 
a fine figure of a man walking erectly behind his cattle. 
Then the bad word coming back to her through the 
mouth of someone who had just been in Dublin. 

“Did you see himself at all and you in the city?” 

“Indeed, then, I did, ma’am. He was driving speech- 
less through the streets on an outside car, and sure 
I nearly fell out of my standing when I saw the quare 
direction he was taking. It was towards no good 
part of the city he was going, but I’ll say no more. . . ” 

Then she would move very quietly into the house 
at the very time maybe that the anxiety of Martin or 
B rigid was upon her and wondering why her man 
wanted to be driving like that through the streets of 
Dublin and she the way she was. . . Then there was 


THE PEASANT 


21 


his home-coming, half drunk and with a queer look 
in his eyes. . . This was the Arthur that always came 
home to her, unchanged and without a sign of improve- 
ment in his ways, but a big hole made in the price of 
the few beasts he had brought with him to Dublin. . . 
There was always a couple of parcels in the back of the 
high trap which she would examine after she had put 
him snoring to bed. It seemed curious that the parcels 
never varied — a big band-box for her holding a new hat 
all gaudy with flowers and ribbons ... she would be 
a grand-looking exhibition if she went to Mass in 
that with all the people jumping in their seats to look 
at her as she went by. It was curious beyond all that 
he should wish to see her decked out in such a way. 
She who had come to him of a respectable family and 
with a fine fortune. It was the quare things they must 
wear in Dublin and the quare women they must be 
altogether. Yet she was not wholly displeased that 
he should think of her in this way, but it was a wicked 
waste of money ... yet the other parcel always 
pained her more — books. Such nonsense for anyone 
to buy! Things, musha, that could be put to no use 
at all. The hats, queer as they were, were good to 
look at from time to time. . . They brought her such 
pretty thoughts now that her days were approaching. . . 

And when Arthur returned to even passable sobriety 
after one of these Dublin visits and lingered for a clear 
day or two from the widow Kelly’s she saw with amaze- 
ment how he took to the books and seemed to find 
comfort in them. For her own part she had never 
read a book and could not possibly guess what might 
be in them. But Arthur, her man, came daily out of 
the room where he wasted precious hours, and went 


22 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


walking around his dwindling bit of land, a queer, 
grandiose smile upon his face but with no meaning 
in it that anyone could see. . . Then she would see him 
as suddenly passing back into the grey mood and re- 
turning again to the widow Kelly’s. A few months 
later came the sale of a few more cattle in Dublin and 
a repetition of the same circumstances surrounding 
their sale. . . 

That had made the sad life of Mary Duignan all the 
while Martin had been rising into manhood and B rigid 
towards beauty. Sometimes she laughed sadly, but 
not without some stir of kindly remembrance for Arthur 
as she saw B rigid looking over the collection of hats 
in all the queer fashions through which they had 
descended. It was the nature of a girl to be letting 
her mind dwell upon such things, but she had felt a 
queer turn of disgust the day she had first seen Martin 
taking a liking for the books. She had listened to all 
of Arthur’s fancies for the future of the boy, but well 
had she endeavoured to turn his mind from such foolish- 
ness and towards the land. She had succeeded until 
now, when this feeling of antagonism for his sister had 
begun to manifest itself, this clash of will which seemed 
to foreshadow dark happening in this house. . . She 
saw the figure of Arthur Duignan again moving gloomily 
about the house, she saw it in the face of her son bent 
over a big book at the fire reading foolishness while 
already people were beginning to talk of his neglect 
of the land. The steadiness of Martin had always been 
her proud boast among the women of the boreens. 

“Oh not a sup of drink ever he took, not even if he 
went into Glannidan forty times a day the sorra drop 
he’d takel ;> 


THE PEASANT 


23 

But to her there had always appeared a subtle corres- 
pondence between Arthur’s drinking and the books he 
brought home in the big parcels from Dublin. So now 
what feelings of gladness she might have experienced 
from watching the decking out of Brigid for the great 
dance were dissipated by the sad spectacle of Martin 
already wasting his time in exact imitation of his father. 
Even if he had indulged in a more full-blooded foolish- 
ness she might have excused him, but this was such 
nonsense as she could make no attempt to understand. 


24 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


V 


HROUGH the various excitements of preparation 



the night of the dance had at last come. It was 


to be held in the riding-school of Glannidan, or as it 
was called by some “The Folly” of Glannidan. It 
was a great circular building which had been erected by 
St. John Murray, a local aristocrat, a good many years 
before. Soon after its erection, St. John Murray who 
had also been one of the most notable gentlemen riders 
of his generation had broken his neck at Epsom. Then 
the riding-school had fallen into disuse with Murray 
Hall, and its existence was never even thought of except 
on an occasion of this kind. Ancient politicians saw 
in such a change of occupation a triumph for the forces 
of the people and said one to the other: 

“Now d’ye see that only St. John broke his bloody 
neck beyant in England he might have turned out the 
worst pill of all the Murray breed. But we’re able to 
have our sons and daughters to a dance in his riding- 
school now if we only have the price of the tickets. 
Arrah, man, d’ye know what I’m going to tell ye? The 
times is changed.” 

“Elite.” This was a word that had crept unaccount- 
ably into the parlance of Glannidan. It here denoted 
a class much further apart than its meaning in French. 
“Swank” was another word which as used in Glannidan 
seemed to be synonymous with “Elite,” a translation 
less of the word than of the mode of life. Yet it was 
not possible to be “Elite” without being “Swanky,” 
while it was possible to be “Swanky” without being 


THE PEASANT 


25 

at all “Elite” or considered so by those who had attained 
to that condition. 

Even at Mass on Sundays the “Elite” made a display 
of their uplifted condition. They came in late for the 
service with silver-mounted umbrellas and other apparel 
of glorified existence, and went up to the very front 
seats as if to assert their right to be nearer God. They 
did not believe in vulgarly mixing themselves even in 
religious circumstances. They sometimes coincided with 
the handful which formed the Protestant congregation 
of Glannidan coming down the street from morning 
prayers. Often they would commingle with these to 
such an extent that people were driven to say: 

“There now, sure the devil a much differ it makes 
what religion you are so long as you have money enough 
to ‘swank’ it!” 

All Protestants were “elite,” and the highest up and 
best connected Catholics sniffed audibly when a lousey 
peasant went in beside them on the seat. . . yet this 
was accepted as the prerogative of certain families. 

“People, don’t ye know, like the Connors and the 
Culligans,” a man would say without having any definite 
idea in his mind as to the exact worth of the Connors 
and the Culligans, but the very sound of the words 
as he said them would seem to communicate some kind 
of idea to his mind. Every event, even to a dance, 
seemed to be arranged with due respect to the feelings 
of such families. Hence the man, who springing from 
the “commonality,” attempted to bridge the social 
gulf and become one of them exercised a disturbing 
influence and made himself a person to be distrusted 
and hated both by one group and the other. And such 
a man was Austin Fagan. 


26 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


The people of the lower orders remembered Jeremiah 
Fagan as one of themselves, a big, drunken old fellow, 
who although semi-illiterate, managed to scribble out 
the accounts of the Glannidan Union, drawing his 
salary regularly, and finally a pension. Although he 
had managed to lift himself into a soft job he had re- 
mained one of themselves, and so they had not been 
given much reason to hate him, but this fellow, Austin, 
had blossomed out, my word! As he went daily to the 
post office about eleven he was a constant figure of 
surprise. People would turn and look after him and 
say: “Why there’s Austin Fagan!” and the remainder 
of his reputation consisted in that he had been connected 
with various scandals which had taken place in the 
workhouse from time to time. He was no longer the 
mere clerk of his father’s day, but an official of local 
government who went loudly about Glannidan and 
whose name was on every lip. Not alone had he 
increased the splendour of his position but he had also 
increased his salary. He had been careful that those 
he used, both men and women, were such as could be 
silenced with a few pounds; but there was a fire of 
hatred for him smouldering. The hum of his motor 
bicycle as he careered idly down the summer roads 
had raised up a feeling of anger which might not be 
easily quenched. 

It was at a dance, beyond all other places, that 
Austin was most loudly in evidence. As he came into 
the room where the first dance would have begun to 
whirl, his accent could always be heard above the 
hum of the talk and the flow of the music, laughing, 
saying courteous and gallant words to the girl he had 
brought with him. Then, as he glided in, his round face 


THE PEASANT 


27 


shining and his thin hair brushed sleekly down upon 
his small head above his low narrow forehead it was 
at once easy and difficult to realise why he had become 
so captivating. Later his exquisite philandering, and, 
towards morning, a withdrawal with one particular girl 
to a secluded part of the room, whispering and giggling 
and telling queer stories. 

The behaviour of Austin at this St. Patrick’s night 
dance in Glannidan was not so different. Yet there 
were some well versed in his ways, who said that it was. 
To them it appeared as if he had taken a genuine liking 
for Brigid Duignan. Even so, thought William Moore, 
who, as his rival, was forced to be observant. As the 
night extended into morning they thought that, after 
all, it might be a case of genuine love, and at once 
began to envy Brigid. Austin Fagan had a nice soft 
job. Wasn’t she lucky now, and she never to do a 
hand’s turn, the idle strap? Her mother had been 
ambitious too, but Arthur Duignan, God be good to him, 
was the man had kept her down well, and it would be a 
terrible thing if she got a lift by such a marriage now. . . 

While wise heads were already being put together 
over this Austin Fagan was walking down the avenue 
from the riding-school with Brigid Duignan as the day 
was breaking beyond Murray Hall. They still retained 
some of the splendour through which they had just 
moved, but in the dawn all things look mean. The 
trees by the avenue were dripping in a sudden wind 
as he drew her into the shelter of a great beech. . . 

As they moved away down the avenue and out of 
sight of Murray Hall Brigid felt a wave of dread rush 
in to envelop her. He left her at a gate which was not 
very far from the house in the boreens. . . 


28 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


“I hope you had the grand, lovely night, child,” 
said her mother, who had awaited this home-coming 
so anxiously. Brigid seemed on the point of tears as 
she hurried past her mother and into her room. Martin 
glanced up with a scowl but did not speak. He had 
a book beneath his elbow and was noisily taking his 
breakfast. She threw herself upon the bed without 
removing the grand dress she had worn at the dance. 
She covered her head with the bed-clothes to keep 
herself from hearing the muttered curses of her 
brother. . . 


THE PEASANT 


29 


VI 

T HE books had begun to exercise an influence over 
Martin; morning or evening he was scarcely ever 
without a book in his hand now. It was queer, right 
enough, said the people of the boreens. If he had been 
a girl they might have understood and excused him 
vaguely that it was only “human nature.” But this 
present lapse on Martin’s part was more in the nature 
of a calamity like drink. It was worse than drink, 
for that too could be excused. “A good man’s case,” 
they were in the habit of saying of one who would 
occasionally take a drop too much. But that a young 
fellow should suddenly and for no reason show a distaste 
for the beloved land — it was a shocking queer thing. 

He who had once been so regular in his morning 
journey down the boreens was now the very last to come, 
and without any trace at all of his former enthusiasm. 
And often during the day men would creep over to the 
ditch to watch him as he stood like a madman in the 
middle of the field, now looking up at the sun, now 
looking in a dull way at the earth. . . They used 
to marvel what he could be about. Later, if the 
evening happened to be fine, as they went towards 
Glannidan they would see him leaning across the road 
gate his eyes intently fixed upon the printed page of a 
book. 

“Musha, it’s not the same way everyone goes mad!” 
they would say with a loud smirk as they went by. 

Day by day his father, Arthur Duignan, struggled 
further to life in him. There was no stint of books 


30 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


in the house, for his father had brought home a great 
many from time to time. 

“Arrah, musha, where did you get them?” Mary 
Duignan had often said by way of giving vent to her 
annoyance upon the appearance of an unusually large 
parcel. 

“Down the Quays.” 

“I suppose them cost a good penny now!” 

“Oh, only a few shillings.” 

“Well, imagine that now! Selling books, begad! The 
Quays — well! well!” 

Martin had remembrance of such words passing 
between his parents. He was very small when he had 
heard them, but now, with his discovery of the books, 
he began to have some sympathy with and under- 
standing of his father. He too, poor man, had found 
some comfort amid their pages and in their strange 
tales of love and passion. The mind of his father 
must have dwelt upon these things and Martin often 
felt himself thinking how he could have married this 
woman, his mother, so different must she have been 
always, so wedded to the land. The books were already 
beginning to separate him more and more from his 
mother, but not to such an extent as had existed surely 
in the case of his father. 

He had little for which to thank his father unless 
perhaps this hereditary love for the printed page which 
now lifted him up from the dusty tumult of the clay 
to a little comfort. Yet he could not quite forgive 
his father for the way he had neglected the land and thus 
brought him to the muck and torment of his early 
years. And their farm, too, might have been made 
the most comfortable of all the farms of the boreens. 


THE PEASANT 


3i 


He felt this almost insensibly for he had still the agrarian 
eye. Thus, distinct from the clash that had arisen 
in the circumstances of his family just now, there was 
a clash also between the elements of his soul; and this 
was further extended by the influence of the books. 
There arose out of his reading a figure of beauty, an 
ideal figure. He grew to have a love of woman that 
found no response amid the passionless fields. 

The river of romance had already begun to flood his 
soul. The a made match” already suggested by his 
mother was alien and remote from the books left him 
by his dead father. There was Lucy Flynn. If he 
should marry her it might not be altogether a case of 
this kind. She might bring him a fortune, and possibly 
the farm of her father to be amalgamated with his. 
Now the very fact that his mother had mentioned 
marriage to him had created a kind of shy reserve 
about his thought of Lucy, a certain diffidence of 
intention. No doubt people had already begun to 
talk about the eye he had on Henry Flynn’s farm. . . 
So now his thought of girls had most to do with those 
he had seen passing off into the twilight with their 
shapely figures and their brown plaits swinging richly 
. . . and yet, with strangely greater continuity, his 
own figure of beauty would be dancing before him 
wildly above the pool of beauty that was the books. 
Already it had lured him to thought of the bigger world 
beyond the boreens. 

He was changing daily in his relations to his mother, 
and, in the blindness of inevitability, it was not given 
her to realise the cause. It was very little that she 
knew only of this mean life in Glannanea. The Bally - 
ctdlen Gazette , whose local correspondent was Brian 


32 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


Doyle, was the only thing she ever read ; a queer, 
muddy rag which was distinguished only by fearsome 
grammar and exhibited the varying degrees of spite 
which Brian felt for those who had the misfortune to 
incur his illiterate censure. Mary Duignan gloated over 
it when it contained as it often did some particularly 
long account of some local “case.” She would sit 
by the fire reading it with difficulty, and then turning 
her eyes from it she would allow a certain wistfulness 
to creep into them as she began to plan for the future 
of her daughter, who was never likely to meet with a 
misfortune like that of which she had just been reading. 
. . . Often, too, Martin turned to the Ballycullen 
Gazette after his day’s work and struggled through the 
columns of the dirty rag. The “style” of Brian Doyle 
was always a cold-blooded attack upon the English lan- 
guage. Of course he was merely a bosthoon who, through 
a certain amount of cheek earned a few pounds a year 
in doing this kind of thing for the local paper. Often, 
as he saw his mother reading the Ballycullen Gazette, 
Martin would leave aside his book and write down with 
a stub of pencil his own version of some scene or incident 
that had struck his fancy. He found great pleasure in 
writing such exercises and many a time he would read 
them aloud in the fields, his ear taking pleasure in the 
musical swing of the words. 

His father had been a miscellaneous reader. His 
books had been got together carelessly. There were 
scientific books by the side of poetry books, novels by 
the side of religious volumes. It was a remarkable 
feeling this of the mind responding rapidly to the 
accumulation of a vast deal of knowledge, of groping 
beyond the rim of broken clay. . . And yet there were 


THE PEASANT 


33 


moments when the knowledge he had just acquired 
would surge, a burning whirl, in his brain, until at last 
he went for comfort down the clean, green ways of the 
boreens. There were the homely comforts of his mother’s 
house in the evenings while the world of the books 
was vague with an eternal wonder. Around him surged 
the life of the fields all blind and stupid while, from day 
to day, he was growing to see more clearly the mistake 
and the mess that all men make of their lives, the dis- 
tance they continually endeavour to set between them- 
selves and the beauty that he saw. . . 

Now that the summer was about them again he often 
thought of Lucy Flynn. He often went across the 
ripening meadows to speak to her by the old gate at 
the close of a lovely day. But their talk was always 
sordidly upon things of the land. What this was worth 
and what that was worth, what her father had just 
said about the value of such and such a thing and so on. 
Her mind never once rose above the realism of the land. 
She had heard her father speak of Martin and of the 
way he was letting his grand farm go to the bad, and 
now she counselled him upon diligence and attention to 
such a splendid way of living. 

“I wouldn’t mind, Martin, if you were a drunkard, 
but to be getting like this, a kind of foolish about books 
and idling away your time. Why sure no one ever 
heard tell of the like of it. And sure what would I do 
if ever you turned against me through that way of going 
on, or made me turn against you by your getting to be 
like your father, who was a common idiot by all 
accounts I” 

They were all very keen on insulting the memory of 
his father, even Lucy now. Through his own love for 


34 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


the books he was rapidly inviting the very same distrust 
and hatred. . . He went across the gate and bending 
his head down to Lucy spoke to her for a long time. 
Then she put her arms about his shoulders and whispered 
passionately as her hot cheek burned: 

“Martin, I love you. God’s truth, I love you, 
Martin!” 

It was a phrase out of the books, given the colour of 
the peasant speech, and it fell upon his soul like rain 
upon a. parched thing. If only she had ever read any- 
thing she might be like him, was the flash of his thought 
which lit up all the darkness of the fields. 


THE PEASANT 


35 


VII 

T HE Summer had swung in and the beauty of this 
time in Ireland had some of the pain that was 
passing in the house of the Duignans. But, inevitably, 
was it closing in towards the sorrow of some ending. 
In spite of the sneers that had risen against him, Martin’s 
hard work of early spring was proven in the fields which 
were now waving green and high. He had not yet lost 
all the curious, dogged pride the farmer takes in his 
poor assistance of God’s handiwork. He could still feel 
the something in him which called him to the clay 
and he knew that he did not yet come winging 
from out the books as his father must have done when 
he went driving in his half- tall hat through the streets 
of Dublin. There was surely some part of him which 
was still stuck in the little nest of fields behind the 
boreens, and he felt that it was through his mother that 
this bondage had come. 

There was still his sister Brigid. She was certainly 
a pretty girl comely in the possession of qualities which 
in him were differently expressed, qualities which 
likened both of them to their father. Many a time he 
could not help an attempt to realise the way in which his 
father must have regarded her. . . He pictured him, if 
he had lived to see her spring so fine, fancying a marriage 
for her with some gorgeous young man out of a story, 
but merely dreaming all the while, a big windy man 
talking in his cups about the fine daughter he had, doing 
nothing for her either but merely dragging her name 
down among the dirty drunkards in the widow Kelly’s 


36 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


pub in Glannidan. . . Turning in disgust from all this 
sorry hopelessness his mind had begun to struggle into 
admiration for the realism of his mother. After all 
the gropings of her ambition were bound to leave some 
solid result behind them. And this regard lit up other 
ways of understanding. Suddenly it had appeared to 
Mary Duignan that she had something to thank the 
books for after all. They had helped her son to exhibit 
some quality to which she had once turned with affec- 
tion in Arthur Duignan. “Refinement” had been the 
word used to describe it by old Roger Gowney who 
had settled the match so long ago. It was the thing 
that had made her “cotton to” her husband to be. Now 
its reappearance had effected this miracle of reconcilia- 
tion between her son and herself and between her son 
and his sister. 

A change had come upon Brigid too, since the St. 
Patrick’s night dance in Glannidan. It was now her 
mother’s turn to be angry with her. She went seldom 
to Glannidan in the evenings, and so did not seem to 
make the best of her chance of catching William Moore, 
who was nothing short of a good match, by letting him 
see Austin Fagan’s interest in her. At twilight time 
she would sit mooning there in the bedroom, looking 
at herself in the big mirror and binding and unbinding 
her hair. . . To lose the chance of a good match! 
Indeed it was nothing short of a flight in the face of 
Heaven to let her dream of such things. . . But the 
matter was brought to a head by Brigid herself who 
fainted before the mirror one evening after she had 
cycled home from Glannidan. 

“What is it, child; what’s the matter with you?” 

“Oh, mother! It’s Austin Fagan, I thought he was 


THE PEASANT 


37 

going to marry me. Now he says he won’t, and he 
after 

“What’s that, after what? After ruining you, is it?” 

“Oh, mother, I thought he would be such a grand 
match, and I knew how much you wanted me to get 
a good match. Sure I thought he’d be better than any 
farmer with the grand sit he has and all the grandeur 
he’d give me. He said he’d get a side-car for the motor 
bike and drive me down by the boreens the way they’d 
all see me looking so grand.” 

“It happened at the dance, I suppose?” 

“Yes, mother!” 

“Oh, God bless us and save us! Why didn’t I let 
you go there with William Moore!” 

Martin came in now. From the expression on his 
face it might seem that the clay had somehow succeeded 
in subduing him. The spiritual look the books had 
brought him seemed momentarily quenched. He looked 
sweaty and tired standing there in the doorway. 

“What’s this now?” he said, as he saw the huddled 
body of his sister and his mother crying. 

No answer, only his sister sobbing and his mother 
saying : “Dear-a-dear ! ” 

“Is it Austin Fagan?” 

Still no answer from either of the women, and then 
Martin knew. . . He swore no word but went into his 
room and put on his Sunday clothes. There was nothing 
very elaborate in this outfit — just a suit of rough tweed 
from the factory in Ballycullen, a pair of nailed brogues, 
slightly lighter than the ones he wore on week days, and 
a bright tweed cap pulled down in his eyes. These suited 
his figure as he slouched along. 

It was his intention, as he left the house to see his 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


38 

parish priest and to tell him the whole story. Then 
he must seek Austin Fagan, and there might be red 
murder this very evening in the office of the Union. 

Father Clarke sat in a luxurious chair in his dining room. 
Martin entered shyly and very soon felt his temper cool in 
the presence of this big, comfortable man of the world. 
Austin Fagan was a man of position and reputation in the 
parish, while he was only a struggling clod of a farmer. 
The Clerk of the Union was a bit of a blackguard to be 
sure, but he could afford to be a blackguard, and so 
Father Clarke never even mentally included him among 
the ruffians who sometimes disgraced the parish. Martin, 
as he began to speak, felt himself being still further awed 
by the holy pictures which hung all around the walls. 

“My sister is after being destroyed, Father!” 

“Well, and who’s the scoundrel?” 

“Austin Fagan.” 

“This is terrible. What are you going to do?” 

“That’s just what I called to ask you, Father. 
Wouldn’t you think now that it’s him should do some- 
thing after he destroying her and us that belong to her!” 

Martin was momentarily surprised by his bravery in 
speaking thus to his parish priest. . . But he could 
feel no triumph. . . 

“Well, well! I’m surprised to hear this of such a 
promising young man as Austin. But I wish to good- 
ness people would not be flying in my face by getting 
up dances. Do you know what I’m going to tell you? 
The devil does be always lurking in the shadows around 
a dance no matter how “elite” or how “swanky” it may 
be. So come on down with me to the workhouse now 
and mebbe the grace of God would enable us to see the 
silver lining to the darkest cloud.” 


THE PEASANT 


39 


VIII 

U P through the main street of Glannidan they went 
together, Martin walking shyly. Everyone in the 
shops and on the street knew what had happened, and 
exclamations of jubilation immediately leaped up 
among them: 

“There’s the dance for you, there now!” “And 
what’ll Austin do now?” “And d’ye think will he lose 
his job?” “The devil a fear of him!” “Is it 
Austin?” “Man alive, it won’t take a feather out of 
him!” 

Father Clarke as he walked, talked continuously to 
himself, but not in a way, however, which betokened 
great worry or pre-occupation, for this was merely a 
habit of his and a stage of his merely theatrical rage 
when a matter of this kind was brought before him. . . 
He closed one eye every few minutes and took a side 
glance at the lout trotting by his side. 

They were now on the road which led from the village 
to the workhouse. Down the same way were going 
the itinerant tramps for a night’s shelter and up to the 
village for their pints were coming the established 
tramps, the men who got a continuous and comfortable 
living in the workhouse. First came Kerrigan, the 
father of them, scratching his beard, which was great 
and white like a prophet’s. He ran messages for the 
nurses and was paid at the rate of a pint a time. Four- 
teen times a day he came thus scratching his beard 
into Glannidan. Even fairly snug farmers envied hinl 
greatly. If ever they came into Glannidan in the day 


40 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


time and gulped down a few pints, half ashamed of 
themselves, they were sure to meet Kerrigan running 
out of the widow Kelly’s, the brown froth of the porter 
on his beard and spitting out at every few yards. 

“Well be jaises it’s not fair to see that fellow with 
such times. It’s bad enough to be keeping Austin Fagan 
and his like in idleness, but it bates hell to be keeping 
him — an idle, lousey ould curl” 

This would be the burden of their soliloquy as they 
went cantering along in their high traps, men without 
an atom of joy to ease the ugly burden of their lives, 
while Kerrigan, the pauper, whistled gaily as a bird. He 
had lost what land he had once possessed and had come 
into Glannidan Workhouse to end his days. He had a 
happy life and looked a very distinguished pauper indeed 
as he went in and out of Glannidan in his hard hat over 
his black frieze coat and corduroy trousers. 

“Good evening, Father!” said Kerrigan, saluting 
grandly. 

“Good evening, Kerrigan!” said Father Clarke. 

A little further on they met Keogan, the defective 
pauper, whose mind like his face had an unaccountable 
twist towards the comic. He indulged his idiocy in 
satire through ludicrous mimicry which occasionally ap- 
peared gruesome. 

There was a horrible leer on his face when he moved 
in exaggeration of his own natural limp and stroked the 
air under his bare chin in imitation of Kerrigan stroking 
his beard. . . when he walked with his cap adjusted at 
an exciting angle, and smoked a butt of a fag while he 
attempted to transform his hideous gibberish into a 
polished accent he was making a pathetic attempt to 
imitate Austin Fagan. 


THE PEASANT 


4i 


The third established pauper whom they now met 
was an elderly quiet man of decided sanity whose 
mentality was advertised in his quiet bearing. His 
beard was trimmed very tidily, his dark, little 
eyes far sunken in his head and his face white 
like a woman’s. His voice came from a sorrowful 
depth and he maintained his mournfulness even 
while drinking a pint. And it was well-known 
that he could drink more than Kerrigan, and without 
turning a hair. . . 

They moved up a short avenue to the workhouse 
gate. On either side a few old pauper women were 
weeding. They did not even lift their eyes to look 
at the passers-by. . . As they went into the yard they 
saw a minor official of the workhouse gather the skirts 
of his coat under his arm and hurry across the yard. 
But one or two of the dozen of stout he was carrying 
slashed out and the necks were broken of them against 
the trodden gravel of the yard. One of the bottles 
rolled towards them and struck against the toe of 
Father Clarke’s boot. He turned a woe-begone face to 
Martin: 

“One of the ruinations of poor Ireland. I pray you 
avoid it, young man, and let it never contaminate your 
lips.” 

Drink! The idea struck queerly upon Martin's mood. 
Beyond the torment through which his mind was passing 
he could understand this thing now. . . He had a 
momentary glimpse of men drinking away their sorrow 
in the widow Kelly’s. . . It was curious that the power 
of drink should have been suggested to him so ironically. 
He felt like doing something now which might help 
him to forget. And this was worse than the death of 


42 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

a beast, because it was worse than the death of a Chris- 
tian. . . 

But already they had walked into the Clerk’s office. 
It was the evening of a Board Day and Brian Doyle 
had remained behind to help the Clerk in his work 
upon the minutes of the meeting. This was a customary 
performance, somewhat sacred to Brian and Austin. 
Austin permitted Brian to ape his accent and person- 
ality for being so obliging in permitting him to censor 
his reports of the meetings of the Glannidan Union, 
which appeared every second Thursday in the Bally- 
cullen Gazette. It was not everything that happened 
at a meeting was fit to be put into a paper. . . Conse- 
quently here were these two now with their heads 
together whispering and writing. Austin was writing the 
official minutes of the meeting on a form which was to 
be sent to the Local Government Board that very 
evening: Brian was writing his report for the Bally- 
cullen Gazette. From time to time they compared notes 
to make sure that in the more important points their 
accounts were identical. It was amusing to see the way 
that Brian threw down his pen at exactly the same 
moment as Austin yawned, and when Austin extended 
the slit of his thin lips in a smile Brian showed his big 
teeth simultaneously. 

They now said “Good evening, Father!” at exactly 
the same moment and gave a skit of a laugh in unison. 
Immediately Austin was telling a funny story of Local 
Government Board and Father Clarke was laughing 
great big laughs which shook the office. Brian re- 
mained fiddling with his pencil and his notebook, 
dutifully echoing the merriment of these two men 
whom he admired in the very depths of his feeble 


THE PEASANT 


43 

imitative soul. . . All three were still unmindful of the 
man who had walked down to the workhouse with 
Father Clarke and who now stood in the passage be- 
tween the workhouse and the board-room twisting his 
cap and tearing little bits out of it while a great rage 
rent his soul. 


44 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


IX 


T the end of their joke Father Clarke called Austin 



out of the office by a jerk of his head. He came 


out, and the three men now stood in the passage. An 
immediate and sharp contrast was apparent. The 
Clerk of the Union looked so sleek and summery in his 
oiled hair and flannel suit by the side of this man of 
the clay. 

“Good evening, Duignan!” said Austin. 

“Good evening, Mr. Fagan,” said Martin. 

Austin sprang open his silver cigarette case and put 
a fag pendulously between his lips. He had the reputa- 
tion of being the one man in Glannidan who could smoke 
a cigarette properly, and this was a fact he did not seem 
to forget even now. . . Father Clarke spoke after an 
awkward moment: 

“Martin here was making a kind of suggestion and 
we coming down the road, that it might be as well, 
maybe, if you were to think of getting married, 
Austin.” 

There was a twinkle in his eye as he said this, as if 
he still felt inclined to be jocular at the expense of Martin 
and his sister. The blood of Martin was beginning to 


boil. 


“Are you going to marry B rigid?” he jerked out. The 
words seemed to ring with clear finality in the little 
passage. 

“Marry Brigid, what?” For the moment Austin 
appeared stunned, but there was a show of calmness 
in his grin as he raised his yellow fingers to his head 


THE PEASANT 


45 


and patted his sleek hair. Father Clarke took out a 
big red handkerchief and blew his nose with a great blast 
of sound. 

“Easy now, Martin! Your mother ” 

“Ah, this is no woman’s job.” 

“Quietly now, we don’t want any nonsense.” 

There was a red mist before the eyes of Martin; he 
lashed out and struck Austin between the eyes and blood 
pumped out of the Clerk’s nostrils. 

“What d’ye mean to go strike Mr. Fagan like that 
and he not in an attitude of defence! I’m ashamed of 
you as one of my parishioners!” 

Brian Doyle rushed out of the office. 

“You bloody cur!” he said to Martin. The bogman 
had momentarily asserted himself in the devoted follower 
of the Clerk of the Union. 

“That’ll do now!” said Father Clarke. “The fact 
that your sister has been misfortunate gives you no 
license to behave in this high-handed way. D’ye know 
what it is now, I’d nearly feel justified in washing my 
hands of the whole affair!” 

With extraordinary suddenness a change had come 
upon the workings of Martin’s mind. Where was the 
result now of all his reading of romance? Here in 
this first crucial moment of his life it was the brutal 
and passionate peasant that had appeared and not 
any removal of himself from the peasant by any artifice 
of refinement. The artifice of education had certainly 
done something for this big man they called Father 
Clarke, making him subtle, far-seeing, capable of com- 
promise, cunning, powerful. . . Austin was gasping and 
looking out stupidly through a haze of pain. Brian’s 
face was as big as the moon. . . Into Martin’s heart 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


46 

was beginning to creep a great feeling of abasement. 
Nothing from the others could lower him further than 
he had been just lowered by his own conduct. 

“By God, Fagan, I’ll kill you if you don’t marry 
her!” The words had merely struggled out of his 
feelings of defeat, but they had a swift effect upon the 
others. They came together and began to speak in 
whispers. He drifted to the yard door out of earshot, 
and stood there as one who has been suddenly snatched 
away from life. He did not seem to feel that the others 
were adjusting his fate. 

“It would be best to get him away from here.” 

“It would indeed, Father!” The little mean voice 
of Brian Doyle could just barely suppress a haw! haw! of 
a laugh at the expense of Martin as he felt that an ad- 
justment was about to be made in favour of Austin Fagan. 

“God knows I don’t want to see any bad work, and 
that’s what’ll happen surely if this young fellow is 
allowed to remain here. He’ll brood to himself and 
he’ll drink, and the child’ll be growing up before his 
two eyes every day.” 

Father Clarke looked long at Austin, and immediately 
the light of realisation was bright between them. . . 

“A lump sum of say a £100 to do for this young 
fellow. It’ll be cheap at the price, for a high spirited 
public young man like you wouldn’t like to see himself 
made a show of in a compulsory job of this kind. Don’t 
you know the influence I have with the solid, respectable 
men of the Board and a rise of twenty pounds a year 
or so that I could manoeuvre to recompense you would 
be nothing to sneeze at.” 

Brian Doyle’s big face was glistening in expectation. 
He could already see where he would come in. 


THE PEASANT 


47 


“Of course you’ll use your influence, Brian, through, 
your job on the Bally cullen Gazette to help poor Austin 
through this troublesome business. You’ll get his photo 
printed on the front page and a whole article about the 
imaginary examinations he’s after passing, and a brilliant 
account of the great man he is entirely, and how Glan- 
nidan should be so proud of him. It’ll make grand 
reading for the ratepayers, and they’ll forget the kind of 
man he is exactly — I mean about this kind of thing and 
the like. It’s what they read in the Ballycullen Gazette , 
and not what happens in reality that counts. I often 
think it a blessing that we have that paper, for it helps 
us all out of many a hole.” 

“Oh, you may depend on me to do that, Father. 
It’s not the first time,” said Brian with a smirk of pride 
in remembrance of this, his most notable accomplish- 
ment. 

“And then, mebbe, when you’re well out of the busi- 
ness, Austin, you’ll have an idea that you’re a finer type 
of man than ever you were before.” 

“But when will this move about the rise in my salary 
begin?” said Austin, now almost fully recovered. 

“Oh, just as soon as you can manage the £100, don’t 
you know!” said Father Clarke moving out to accost 
Martin once more. 


48 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


X 

I T would mean some scraping to get the £100 together, 
for it took a good deal to keep up his brilliant 
appearance as Clerk of the Union before the public, al- 
though he made a decent income out of the ratepayers 
between his salary and his “chances.” These 
“chances” were curious things. They consisted for 
the most part in bribes from those who contracted for 
small jobs in the gift of the Board, from the putting 
of a sucker in a pump to the building of a labourer’s 
cottage. These contracts were supposed to be set by 
tender, the lowest tender consistent with the best in- 
terests of the ratepayers to get the job. But to defeat 
this possible exercise of fair play was a very easy opera- 
tion. It consisted only in slipping the tender of the 
contractor who had given the biggest bribe to the Chair- 
man of the meeting at the proper moment and in de- 
stroying those which might afford awkward evidence 
should they remain to be seen. Any little “scenes” which 
occurred at meetings of the Board as a result of this 
“chancing” were never included in the reports of 
the meetings of the Board which Brian Doyle 
sent to the Bally cullen Gazette . And Brian did all this 
for nothing, beyond the privilege of being allowed to 
make himself the dirt which Austin continually wiped 
off his boots. 

But Austin was compelled to do something now 
which he had never to do before. He had to run around 
all the contractors of the Union fishing for small sums 
with vague suggestions. No feeling of regret for the 


THE PEASANT 


49 


girl stirred in him, but he cursed her and his luck as 
he came home from the last of these expeditions, having 
risen the wind to a much lesser extent than he had 
expected. He would have to sell the motor bicycle, 
which had been his proudest appendage of distinction. 
But he would yet make the bally ratepayers pay through 
the nose for this. 

So a few days later Father Clarke came down the 
boreens and into the house of Mary Duignan, which was 
a changed house since this blow had fallen. 

“Good day to you, Mrs. Duignan !” he said; “this 
is the sorry business. Why didn’t you keep better cor- 
rection upon this daughter of yours?” 

“Oh, Father, sure it wasn’t my fault, nor it wasn’t 
her fault. And what are you going to do to that black- 
guard, Austin Fagan, if he doesn’t marry her?” 

“ ’Tis the hand of God and the will of God, Mrs. 
Duignan, that determines these things, and mebbe what’s 
going to happen is all for the best. Your son, Martin, 
is going away!” 

She was just in the act of filling out the port wine 
for him as he said this, and she stopped while her hand 
trembled and the big tears came rolling into her eyes. . . 
Now if it had been her daughter, Brigid, who was going 
away, and very quietly too, after what had happened, 
it would not have mattered so greatly. Martin might 
have married and brought in a daughter-in-law suffi- 
ciently fortuned to fulfil her ambition. This of course 
when she had finally succeeded in putting between him 
and Lucy Flynn. . . There was a kind of drumming 
in her ears now which kept her from hearing clearly 
what Father Clarke was saying. 

“I’m going to do for him, so I am!” 


50 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


“Yes, Father.” 

“He’s a fine, unusual type of young fellow, with a 
taste for the books, I hear, like his father before him.” 

“That’s true. Father, that’s true!” 

“I’m going to put him on for the Excise, and it’ll be 
a proud moment for you, Mrs. Duignan, to see him 
coming home to you with the broadcloth suit on him and 
the white cuffs down to his fingers. 

“A gauger, no less, the gauger Duignan!” 

“That’s what he might eventually rise to.” 

“I’m in dread he might turn to the drink, the same 
as his father before him.” 

“Time enough having that dread, Mrs. Duignan, until 
he is a gauger.” 

“Indeed, I knew he was always too talented for the 
clay, and wouldn’t everything be grand now only for this 
misfortune to Brigid?” 

“All the same we might be able to do something for 
Brigid, to settle her like. You have a grand bit of farm, 
and it will be nice and empty when Martin goes off to 
Dublin to go on for the Excise. There might be a young 
fellow in a distant part of the country looking for a place 
to put in his head.” 

Father Clarke was a man who never made a suggestion 
out of his imagination, and he now had such a young 
man in his mind, a half-witted farmer from Mucklin 
named Jamesey Cassels who had been left a few hundred 
pounds by an aunt who had just died in America. 
He had been looking everywhere for a wife, but no one 
would marry the omadhaun. He was at the fair of 
Glannidan on this very day. So that very evening 
after his dinner Father Clarke brought Jamesey Cassels 
out from Glannidan to see the place and to see Brigid. 


THE PEASANT 


Si 


. . . For half an hour the young man from Mucklin 
remained, grinning foolishly at Brigid in the kitchen, 
while her mother and the priest arranged for the future 
of the couple inside in the room. She was attacked 
by a huge feeling of physical disgust as she sat and 
looked at the man with whom she would have to live. 
She who had worn dainty clothes and longed to be the 
wife of a man who did not have to soil his hands. It 
was her brother, Martin, who was going to have the best 
of it now, while she was to be stuck in the face of the clay 
with this thing who was now grinning at her foolishly 
as he sat there upon the other stool. . . 

“ ’Tis a grand place, ma’am, and a fine daughter, 
and the son you have must be an awful idiot to be 
hikeing off to the city,” said Jamesey Cassels as he stood 
in the room a little later showing the sheaves of notes, 
which were his credentials. There and then the marriage 
was arranged for an early date. 

Mary Duignan went quietly about her preparations 
for the departure of Martin. She bought him a new 
suit of clothes, which were made by Lowry Pigeon the 
tailor, and socks and shirts, which she packed into a 
little imitation portmanteau. There appeared very 
little that was admirable about this going away. It 
was something that had been forced upon him by some 
power outside himself, and it was hard to think that it 
might ever bring him any great distinction amongst his 
fellow men. 

Now, suddenly, too, his poor surroundings were re- 
appearing to him quite differently. The roads were 
like white silk ribbons about the bright green of the 
fields. It was truly beautiful now at midsummer in 
Glannidan and Glannanea. These places seemed 


52 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


lightly curtained by a haze of beauty, beauty upon field 
and tree and upon all glad growing things, a strange, 
quiet beauty too about the white thatched houses and 
the blue-hazed bog which stretched away to Ballycullen. 
It was grand to stand now at the end of the day amid 
the great diminuendo of the soundless land, to feel the 
evening shadows creeping in and to sense some of the 
passionate secrets of the red heart of the clay. His 
lonely vigils at twilight time made him curiously afraid, 
and he retreated from them once more to the consolation 
of Lucy Flynn. . . She appeared strangely intimate now 
for no other reason, perhaps, than because she was slip- 
ping out of his life. Their ways in this place had been 
wedded to the quality of their lives, and now these ways 
were about to part ... yet he kissed her long at the 
gate when they met one evening and a new tenderness 
sprang into his heart as he heard her say: 

“And sure, I thought, Martin, that you’d never go 
away from Glannanea. Sure I thought the two farms 
would grow into one, just naturally. Now you’re going 
to the city where you’ll be meeting grand, refined girls, 
and it’s not of me you’ll be thinking at all.” 

“Maybe the city is not my place in life, after all; 
but I’m in doubt, sure, if this is my place either. Since 
I began to read and think for myself I’ve had the queerest 
thoughts.” 

“Musha, sure, I think it was the books that done for 
you. Everyone said it was unlucky for you to be giving 
up your time to them and you ordained to be a 
farmer.” 

He caught her in his arms and kissed her warmly 
again, but they parted without any words of greater 
tenderness. . . He thought of her all the way home 


THE PEASANT 


S3 

across the dew- wet fields. . . When he went into the 
room where all his father’s books were he knew a mo- 
ment of deeper sadness than had marked his parting 
with Lucy The books seemed suddenly more real to 
him. But as he glanced through a few of them vacantly 
in turn the image of her would continue to gleam before 
his eyes. . . 


END OF BOOK I 


BOOK II 


THE DREAMER 




/ 













































THE DREAMER 


57 


BOOK II 
THE DREAMER 
I 

A S Martin went down the boreens on his way to 
Dublin next morning the feeling uppermost in 
his breast was one of emancipation. He was going 
away from the clay, but even as he went he could not 
keep his eyes from wandering to the beauty of his 
tillage field. His corn was standing high and green, 
and beside it his crop of potatoes made a low waving 
forest of green. Here lay the result of his labour in 
quiet days. . . Some power beyond him had turned 
him away from all these things, and as he stood 
there gazing wistfully in his new clothes and shiny, 
fine boots, he was quite unlike the one who had per- 
formed all this labour. . . The morning sunlight was 
sweeping the world in rich waves and he could not 
resist the impulse that had come upon him. He went 
out into the field and his eye roamed up and down the 
grand growth here springing from the clay. . . His 
brow had been wetted and his body bent in this labour, 
and now Jamesey Cassels from Mucklin was to know the 
joy of the harvesting while he was far away in Dublin. 
He knelt down in a furrow and his head fell among the 
green leaves of the crop he had sown. For a long time 
he remained there crying silently, and here surely was 


58 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

no common sorrow but the sublime dignity of a primal 
grief. . . His mother had gone to great pains to fit 
him out for the journey, but now his clothes were soiled 
by the moist clay and the shine of his boots had been 
dimmed by the dew- wet grass of the headland. . . He 
rose up and wiped his eyes with the new silk handker- 
chief which was Brigid’s gift to him at parting, for all 
the dark feeling of misunderstanding that had always 
been between them. 

He left the field, and again hurried down the boreen. 
He could hear the “creak, creak” of a cart coming 
towards him. He raised his eyes suddenly and saw that 
it was Lucy Flynn in a high creel cart making her way 
to the bog. She stopped the horse, and bent down to 
speak to him. She was wearing a rush hat with a broad 
black ribbon round it, and a white apron with the 
bands of it passing over her shoulders. 

“I thought, mebbe, that I might meet you, Martin, 
and that’s what has me going this way so early.” 

“Well, good-bye again, Lucy!” 

He raised his hand, while hers had gone to fumble in 
the pocket of her apron. . . But she drew it out and 
shook his hand warmly. . . He did not hear any move- 
ment of the cart going away from him as he went. . . 
Then she came pattering beside him, a little packet held 
out in her hand. 

“Your little present. Sure I was nearly forgetting.” 

He tore it open as he hurried on. It was the tra- 
ditional gift of a maid to a man — a couple of silk ties. 

He was driven from the priest’s house in Glannidan 
to the station in Ballycullen by Dickeen the priest, 
which was the name by which Father Clarke’s general 
man was known. The six peelers of Glannidan were 


THE DREAMER 


59 

lounging about the barrack as they drove out of the 
village. 

At Ballycullen he was met by Peter O’Brien, the 
“Marquis of Clonlough,” in whose care he was being 
sent to Dublin by Father Clarke. Peter, as Chairman 
of the Glannidan Guardians, just happened to be going 
to Dublin to attend a Convention of the United Irish 
League, which was then in its hey day. He was a man 
who could be relied on to finish off this little job for 
Father Clarke and Austin Fagan. He looked very big 
and important and patriotic as he stood there propped 
up with hi$ silk umbrella on the platform of Ballycullen 
station. 

Now suddenly was Martin coming into contact with 
the official class. Hitherto this class had been connoted 
to his mind by Austin Fagan, but now, suddenly, 
it was appearing that there were other people in the 
world with soft jobs also. It seemed destined that he 
might enter this class now. Anyone apart from the 
land, the stationmaster, the porters, the very stoker and 
engine-driver, whom he caught a glimpse of with their 
blackened faces, were all essential figures in the scheme 
of soft occupations, 

Peter O’Brien spoke little in the train. His attention 
seemed to be altogether concentrated upon his efforts 
to appear notable and dignified before the other pas- 
sengers. He had purchased The Freeman’s Journal 
at Ballycullen and kept crackling it in his hand all the 
way to Dublin. He kept closing and unclosing his lips, 
also his eyes, as he mentally rehearsed the great speech 
he was going to make at this Convention of Joe Devlin’s 
in Dublin. . . The wandering eyes of Martin were upon 
the fields now receding rapidly from the train. Quite 


6o 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


unconsciously he was reckoning the quality and value 
per acre of this piece of land and of that. He saw men 
moving about their fields in these places, also their 
eyes bent down affectionately to the clay. . . So this 
love for the land was no local passion, and all men must 
feel it as he had felt it. . . 

At Broadstone station they stepped from the train 
and took a hackney car down through the city. The 
jarvey sat on one side and Peter O’Brien and Martin 
on the other. The loud powerful voice of “The Mar- 
quis” sounded above the boom of the traffic, describing 
this thing and that, pointing out such and such an hotel 
where he had stopped with Mr. John Redmond, I thank 
ye, at such and such a time. . . Great and ever greater 
Dublin boomed around him. He had known it dis- 
tantly all his life as the place from which everything 
came to Glannidan. Now the reality of it was suddenly 
mysterious, enormous, conspiring in all its constituents 
to crush him. The streets looked monstrous with their 
big houses and teeming life, the monuments, the tram- 
cars and the Liffey appeared also as mute though power- 
ful members of the tremendous conspiracy. There was 
a queer, wide stillness in his mind, and in the midst of it 
room for but one realization. He was wondering would 
it be ever possible for him to become part of this life. , . 
His mind and his heart were still back in the fields where 
he had cried this morning. 

They went up Grafton Street, and “the Marquis” 
said loudly: “The most stylish thoroughfare in 
Dublin!” 

“This is St. Stephen’s Green which we will now 
examine,” he said, momentarily dropping into the 
phraseology and manner of the guide-book. He paid 


THE DREAMER 


61 


the jarvey and Martin took down his imitation leather 
portmanteau from the car. Together they went into the 
Green by the Fusiliers’ Arch, and Martin felt relieved 
when he saw the green plots and the flowers; “the 
Marquis” saying ostentatiously at every moment, 
“A lovely place, a lovely place!” . . . There was a 
red- faced, beefy man walking about with an air of au- 
thority. He carried a blackthorn and wore a high, hard 
hat with gilt band tied round it. He looked like one 
of the six peelers of Glannidan as he went his rounds. 
He was probably an ex-peeler, and momentarily it ap- 
peared curious that this solitary link with Glannidan 
should have arisen. 

Soon they were walking up steps to a grand hall 
door in a quiet street on the other side of St. Stephen’s 
Green. A second later they were standing in a spacious 
office where there were several girls working at clicking 
typewriters. A little man with a dark business-like 
beard now appeared. His eyes had a fiery look behind 
his gold-rimmed glasses, and his gaze upon Martin was 
that of a beast of prey upon another victim. He was 
Mr. Cullen, the head grinder of this “Grinding Estab- 
lishment.” Immediately he fell into conversation with 
“the Marquis of Clonlough.” . . Distantly the sound 
of their chat came to Martin as he sat there so stiffly 
upon his seat, feeling very uncomfortable in his new 
suit and high collar. He became dimly aware that his 
eyes were wandering across the office to where a girl 
above her typewriter was gazing at him steadily. 
Hitherto he had never looked like this into the eyes of 
any girl save perhaps those of Lucy Flynn, who, how- 
ever, had never looked so pretty nor with any bright 
ribbon in her hair. . . Now there were coming into the 


62 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


office, every second or so, pale, anaemic young men 
with big sheaves of papers in their hands. One by one 
Martin saw Mr. Cullen introduce them to Peter O’Brien 
a$ the tutors, and at intervals he saw, hurrying down 
the stairs from the upper rooms, young men dressed 
up in sporting clothes even as he had seen Austin Fagan 
dressed up. . . This was the kind of life he was pre- 
paring to enter, he who had rough hands and a sunburnt, 
freckled face. It seemed queer, and the girl at the 
typewriter was still looking at him. He had heard 
“the Marquis” use such phrases as “a National 
School education,” “a taste for reading,” “rather an 
unusual type of young fellow for a farmer.” Then the 
suave “very well, sir, our best attention,’-* of Mr, 
Cullen. . . 

Now came the weary journey on foot through the 
hard, warm streets with Peter O’Brien, who held his 
head high as he hummed, exceedingly pleased with 
himself that at least portion of Father Clarke’s enormous 
trust in him had been faithfully discharged. He was 
now conducting Martin to the place at which he was to 
lodge while attending “the Grinders.” They entered 
Cuffe Street, with its confusion of smells, in the heat 
of noontide. It was this way that the lodging-house 
lay. 

“Aye, this is Mrs. McQuestion’s!” said Peter O’Brien 
as they stopped a little further on outside the window 
of a grimy lodging house. Through the murky glass 
they could see a great swarm of flies buzzing around 
a piece of meat in the window. . . They went in, the 
door-bell giving a harsh, little clang as they entered. 
Martin saw a woman, not unlike his mother in appear- 
ance, but she did not possess the clean tidiness of hfo 


THE DREAMER 


63 

mother. . . The performance, as with Mr. Cullen, was 
here repeated, and Martin felt a little turn of annoyance 
sweep in on him. He was being arranged for, but with- 
out the slightest regard for what his own wishes might 
be. . . Then Mrs. McQuestion shook hands with Peter 
O’Brien and some money passed between them. . . 
Later, as he sat down to a curious looking dinner in 
the little, smelly kitchen, Martin was forced to remember 
that “the Marquis” had gone to one of the hotels to 
partake of a bigger, better feed with some of the most 
notable Irishmen of his time! 


64 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


II 



S Martin sat there eating, Mrs. McQuestion enter- 


tained him with an autobiographical account. . . 


Now and then he felt his eyes wandering from accom- 
panying concentration upon the narrative to a girl in 
bare feet, with a torn dress and dishevelled hair, who was 
washing plates in a dirty scullery off the kitchen. . . 
Mrs. McQuestion went on to describe the grand-man- 
nered, lovely girl she herself had been a good many 
years before, and of how she had been the faithful 
servant of a crippled lady. 

“She left me a few hundred, but, sure, God knows, 
I had it well earned, slaving for the peevish old thing, 
night, noon and morning. Then I married himself, 
A time-keeper in Jacob’s he was, and he could drink 
like a fish, and begad, what d’ye think, but his failing 
soon began to make big inroads on my little fortune. 
Then I had to take this little place and keep boarders. 
Indeed, between struggling one way and another, it was 
hard enough to keep himself in drink until he died. 
After he went I never thought of marrying again, for 
there’s only the one marriage. Ah, there’s only the one 
marriage!” 

Martin went up to the room that had been 
allotted to him. It was far up the stairs, and a musty 
smell seemed to linger about it. Here he opened his 
little imitation leather portmanteau, and taking his few 
belongings from it spread them out upon the bed. . . 
His mother would seem to have expressed a confession 


THE DREAMER 


65 

of her love and tenderness in all these little things. . . 
At the bottom of the bag he found a packet of notes 
which were evidently intended to be used as pocket 
money. The sight of the money made him feel very 
lonely. . . 

The summer dusk was beginning to creep in around 
Dublin as he sat there in a trance of thought. He went 
to the window and saw where the coppery gloom was 
falling down about the houses. It was that hour 
wherein the great strength of a city fails and falls down 
to rest. The wild noises of the day were being replaced 
by other sounds which denoted a different purpose. 
A little way down this street was a theatre, and as 
Martin saw the laughing crowds moving thither there 
grew upon him a desire to be mingling with his kind 
upon the street below. At home in Glannanea this 
need for human companionship had not attacked him 
to any great extent; he could have remained for ever 
lonely by the gate watching people pass into Glannidan 
in the evenings. But now this feeling was different, 
it was a longing which he could not attempt to deny. . . 
He tied up the notes in his handkerchief and stuck them 
deep down in his trousers pocket. Then he went 
downstairs. . . 

There was a number of men now greedily munching 
their tea in the kitchen, men who were speaking in the 
jargon of the city and expressing little spiritual kinship 
with him. He surprised Mrs. McQuestion in her 
description of the “new studio” who had come to 
her to-day. She was evidently disconcerted by his 
sudden appearance now, for he did not look at all like 
the grand young man she had just described. In the 
immediate opinion of the men at the table he was 


66 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


merely “a country mug.” As he went to the door she 
came after him and said: 

“Now, Mr. Duignan, I hope you’ll be back early and 
that you won’t be minding any of the bad flirts you’ll 
be meeting in the street.” 

“The what?” 

“The bad girls that do be prowling about for to ruin 
fine young fellows with grand futures before them like 
you.” 

He felt puzzled by her words as he moved out among 
the hurrying excited throngs of people. He drifted 
sullenly along, and now and then was he uplifted almost 
by a sense of combat. Although it was a week-day 
everybody appeared to be dressed in Sunday clothes. He 
saw a great many men who were like the shop-boys who 
sometimes came to Glannidan from Dublin. They 
hurried along giggling cant words between them. 
There were groups of girls, too, who reminded him of 
those who went walking out of Glannidan in the evenings. 
. . . But a darker magic seemed to flash from 
their eyes. 

He inquired his whereabouts from a heavy policeman, 
who told him that he was standing on O’Connell Bridge. 
. . . As he stood wondering, his hand on the parapet, 
his eyes were caught by the splendour of the lights 
reflected in the water. It seemed as if someone had 
been washing golden vessels in the Liffey. . . The tone- 
less voice of an old woman with a wide face rang 
monotonously on his ears: “Wax matches, a penny, wax 
matches, a penny!” . . . There were great crowds about 
him and many coloured lights upon the water, and gold 
and silver spilling out to sea. . . 

Now he was standing before a little theatre whose 


THE DREAMER 


67 

name was vaguely familiar. Then he remembered 
there had been books of the plays that had been per- 
formed here among the batches of books his father 
had brought home with him from Dublin from time 
to time. Yet were these almost the only books he had 
been unable to read. In fact they had puzzled him 
exceedingly. Their characters were peasants like him- 
self, whose woes and torments were his daily round. 
However could a man bring himself to write of such 
when he could be thinking instead of the beauty of 
the world and of dark-eyed girls with ribbons in their 
hair? . . . Yet, as he stood watching now, he saw rich 
and grand-looking people drive up to the door of this 
place. He saw women with bare, gleaming shoulders, 
and men in evening dress with stiff white fronts which 
shone beneath the lamps at the entrance to the theatre. 

Martin went around the corner and entered the pit. 
His eyes were immediately held by the continual move- 
ment of well-dressed people coming into the stalls of 
the theatre. . . Dublin was certainly a place of wonder. 
The lights were suddenly switched off, after the orchestra 
had played the overture, and he was looking at a scene 
out of the life he knew. He felt a sudden interest. 
The words of the characters in the play came to him as 
had the words of his mother and sister in his own home. 
And there was a girl in the play who, through the situ- 
ation in which she was placed, grew to have a certain 
nobility in keeping with that of the heroines in some 
of the books he had read. And yet as she stood there, 
personified by a great actress, on the centre of the stage 
in her white apron with the bands across her shoulders, 
she was not at all unlike Lucy Flynn. And the man was 
like himself, but he did not marry the girl, and this 


68 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


was the first time he had seen such an ending to any 
piece of writing. 

He did not seem to feel the same crush of power in 
the crowds as he went home. Mrs. McQuestion was 
waiting anxiously at the door. . . 


THE DREAMER 


69 


III 

I N the morning he met Mr. Cullen in the office. He 
felt the words tripping queerly on his tongue as he 
spoke, for the little typist was looking at him with her 
dark eyes . . . yet at the same moment he felt her 
slipping out of his mind and he had a notion that she 
would not return. 

Mr. Cullen took his arm and together they moved up 
a wide staircase. They went into a small class-room 
near the top of the house. 

“Now you are to try these examination tests,” said 
Mr. Cullen; “we want to find out what class you are 
suited for.” 

After giving a few further directions he went out 
of the room and Martin was left alone with all the 
desks and the maps. It was not at all unlike the little 
schoolroom of Glannidan. . . There were the papers 
on the desk before him containing tests in the subjects 
usually set for the examination for assistants of Excise: 
arithmetic, geography, history, handwriting, English 
composition, mathematics. As he turned them over 
idly he seemed unable to draw any meaning from them, 
all seemed to mean the same thing, and to mean nothing 
when all was told. He had only got a smattering of 
knowledge from a semi-illiterate National teacher, 
and his schooldays had been short and blanched by the 
anxiety of the land ... yet the dogged spirit he had 
developed from the clay told him it would be a queer 
thing if he did not make some kind of a show now. 
Yet it was a fancy that had come out of the books 


70 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


which arose immediately to sustain him; he began to 
jot down his thoughts upon one of the subjects which 
were named for composition, and it was very surprising 
to see how rapidly they grew into the clear expression 
of ideas. It seemed curious that in the midst of his 
inability he should possess this gift. But the writing 
was laborious for his hand was more used to the plough. 

Then one of the white-faced tutors came in to gather 
up the papers, and Martin gave him a woe-begone look 
as if in apology for his lack of effort. 

“Of course these God-damned things don’t matter in 
the least,” said this white-faced young man, “they are 
only more of Cullen’s codology. Young fellow, you’ll 
be sorry you came here, for so far as I can see you’ll 
never, to use a vulgar expression, warm your backside 
in the Excise.” 

It was the perfect frankness of this expression of 
opinion which caused Martin to immediately like this 
young man. In the office some minutes later the little 
dark-eyed girl handed him a parcel. 

“Your books!” she said. 

He took them from her without a word, indeed 
without even looking at her* 

Now began his life in Dublin, this daily passing to 
and from the Grinder’s to the mean lodging-house in 
the dim region behind Cuffe Street. A curious contrast 
was immediately to be observed as existing between the 
regard for him at each place. 

In the “College,” as he liked to call it, he was meeting 
men far above him socially, sons of the official class 
who might some day become district inspectors of 
police or Indian civil servants. They went in and out 
of the same class-rooms; they were lectured by the 


THE DREAMER 


same tutors; their goal was the goal of the uplifted 
young man. They nodded to him even when he met 
them outside the class-rooms. They addressed him 
as “Duignan” and the tutors addressed him as “Mr. 
Duignan.” He listened to the lectures and found them 
interesting because they were an unusual experience f 
He found himself imbibing knowledge rapidly, and could 
give very creditable answers to any questions which 
were sprung upon him. Thus was an extravagant 
estimate formed of his capabilities, and he was credited 
with qualities which did not rest on any solid foundation. 
He had made special progress in the subject wherein the 
fancy had come to him that he could do better than 
Brian Doyle. His compositions were sometimes read as 
models of what Mr. Cullen and his labourers, the tutors, 
could do, to the wondering classes. 

But back in his lodgings at Mrs. McQuestion’s Martin 
knew for a certainty the limitations of his own person- 
ality. It was the sharp contrast he formed with the 
other boarders that endowed him with this note of re- 
ality. He was descended from a long line of men and 
women who had drawn their living out of the land, and 
at home in the clay the fact that he had attempted to 
question his hereditary destiny had only made him a 
cockshy for ignorant hatred and scorn. And yet because 
of all that his residence here had somehow happened, 
and even here was he the victim of the very same feelings 
of distrust, especially when he came in from the College, 
when the little bell above the door clanged and he left 
his books down on the greasy counter. 

“There’s the studio!” Mrs. McQuestiort would say, 
and some of the men, bent low over their dinners, would 
look up at him with a glower, speaking no word. They 


72 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


were queer, morose men who spoke little to one another 
or to Martin. It was difficult to make a guess at their 
occupations, because it was at all times that they went 
in and out. They formed varying examples of failure 
in life from a young fellow who spent the time between 
coughing, reading the sporting newspapers, spitting and 
smoking “Woodbines,” to a very old, quiet man who 
had that look of wisdom which a man puts on immedi- 
ately before the end of a long, misspent life. These two 
would be always sitting in the place that was called the 
“dining-room,” and it was to them that his entrance 
always afforded the most acute annoyance. 

“Where do they be digging them out of?” the old 
man would say with a laboured asthmatic sneer. 

“I dunno the bloody hell!” the younger would reply 
between his coughs. 

“Somebody or another that left a lot of money, and 
his people not knowing what to do with it they put him 
on for this job after taking all the other brothers 
he had from the plough and sending them to Maynooth 
or All Hallowes!” 

Such an expression of opinion to enlighten the wonder- 
ing couple would often fall from Garrig, a tall, elderly 
man with a military moustache and a Limerick accent, 
who sometimes gave a humorous turn to the conversation, 
not that he was a humorist at all, for he would often 
say a thing like this: 

“May the curse of God alight seventeen times upon 
the saintly employers of labour in this city, and, further- 
more, I’ll frighten the life out of you by saying: may 
the curse of God alight upon the curse of God ! ” 

“Old curse-of-God Garrig, the Socialist,” they called 
him in Mrs. McQuestion’s. 


THE DREAMER 


73 

Then there was Montgomery, the carpenter, who 
never worked and was always borrowing “tuppences,” 
which he immediately spent upon pints in Lorcan 
Murphy's pub across the way. There were two or three 
bookmaker's clerks who occasionally came home 
raging drunk from Baldoyle or the Curragh. During 
periods of prosperity these would spend the day drinking 
in Lorcan Murphy's pub, and the nights in making 
furtive attempts to introduce certain ladies into Mrs. 
McQuestion’s house. But she was always too smart 
for them. 

She used to tell, with great gusto, a story of Heidseick, 
a German baker, who had also tried the same game once 
upon a time. 

“He was the best boarder ever I had, but I caught 
them in the middle of the night and slung them out on 
the street, so I did.” 

Yet, in spite of this vigilance, and the fact that Mrs. 
McQuestion went to Mass every morning in the Car- 
melite Church in Aungier Street, life in her house seemed 
to be a kind of continuous attack upon the decencies. 
There were times when Martin felt himself slipping so 
far down into the degradation of it that he longed pas-* 
sionately for the clean, sweet perfume of the bog which 
stretched away from Glannanea to Ballycullen. . . 

Now the days were growing shorter, and the lamps 
in the streets were lighted earlier. This was a glad 
time for Martin. He would leave aside his book and 
his pipe and go to the long window to look down upon 
the people moving about in the warm lamp-lit haze 
below. . . His mind would become a blank as he 
remained there gazing. Unmoved by any impulse, 
he would feel it moving into harbours of great quiet. . . 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


74 

This was the hour when Mrs. McQuestion went to the 
Carmelite Church for evening devotions, and the hour 
when her boarders had mostly dispersed into the pubs. 
Yet this was the hour also when the servant girl always 
employed by Mrs. McQuestion came in to tidy his room. 
She was a wild half-clad creature, who spoke in the 
terrible accent of lowest Dublin. Her eyes were always 
upon Martin, whether she was washing the plates after 
dinner or making up the beds of an evening. 

One evening her eyes were more piercingly upon him 
as she handled the sheets and pillows. His eyes 
wandered to the street outside and were upon three 
girls passing down to the theatre. They were beautiful 
girls, richly clad. They passed out of sight, and he 
turned around to look at the girl in the room behind 
him. There were only the two of them in the quiet room 
and her lips were richly red. . . Suddenly he turned 
away from her again to contemplate the street, but now 
his eyes were clouded. . . He heard her slipping from 
the room and the patter of her bare feet down the stairs. 
Something had kept him from her. He turned to the 
looking-glass and saw himself. Somehow he was not 
the man who had come away from Glannanea so 
recently. His appearance was certainly still that of the 
peasant but the city had changed it. He was shaven 
now, and spruce as any young man in the city, and he 
wore a suit of Sunday clothes every day. Yet was it 
some part of the man who had come away from the clay 
that had saved him from the penalty of what might have 
happened just now. . . He had suddenly remembered 
his sister, Brigid. 

He hurried from the house and was soon in a well-lit 
street where there were numbers of young pretty women 


THE DREAMER 


75 


moving about or standing in little groups. They looked 
at him with soft eyes and some dropped love words which 
came to his ear. He was not blind to their beauty, but 
he hurried on in fear. 

Soon he was standing before two high-domed buildings 
with a group of vulgar statuary between them. He saw 
people move in and out of one of the buildings with 
bundles of books in their hands. He saw a couple of 
fellows from “the College” going in and he followed 
them timidly. This was the National Library of Ireland, 
they told him, where one might come and read at 
pleasure. When he entered he saw the bright lights and 
all the people reading, and the shelves of books and the 
assistants busy giving out books. He felt very glad that 
he had discovered this place. 


76 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


IV 

E VERY evening now, about the hour when Mrs. 

McQuestion went out to do her devotions, 
Martin gathered up his note-books and went across to 
the National Library. There surely was a solace which 
blotted out the combined torture of the College and of 
Mrs. McQuestion’s house. It was very pleasant to 
go there and to feel himself being gradually carried 
away by the dream that came out of all the books. 
He read every book which struck his fancy, without any 
regard for any connection they might have with his 
studies. True he found an increase of intellectual 
energy through his visits to the Library, and he came 
to be looked upon as something in the nature of a 
prodigy by Mr. Cullen and his men. He was a very 
well-known figure coming into the reading room and 
passing by the people who assembled in their usual 
places by the tables every evening. The somewhat 
ungainly figure of him had already begun to de- 
velop the thoughtful stoop of literature. He was 
fond of sitting down by the side of those whose 
names he soon learned, by Thomas McDonagh and 
Padraic Colum, and Sheehy Skeffington and Padraic 
Pearse. 

It was here he entered into the friendship of Sean 
O’Hanlon. It began one evening that he had asked 
at the counter for a copy of Mr. Yeats’s Poems. 
O’Hanlon immediately sprang into spiritual friendship 
with him. 

“I do a bit of writing myself,” he said in a burst 


THE DREAMER 


77 

of confidence; “come with me on Sunday and I’ll show 
you a few manuscripts.” 

Their talks and meetings both inside and outside 
the Library became frequent, and they went together 
every Thursday evening to the Tower Theatre, which, 
strangely enough, Martin had discovered for himself on 
his very first evening in Dublin. They worked 
themselves into heated discussions of the plays which 
were produced there, and O’Hanlon told Martin of the 
play which he had himself written. It seemed that 
there was scarcely a young man of their age in Dublin 
who had not written at least one play of some kind. 
To Martin it appeared that O’Hanlon’s biggest handi- 
caps as a dramatist were his lack of humour and the 
fact that he knew nothing at all of the Irish peasant. 
But his enthusiasm was powerful. He had followed 
the Irish Theatre all round the town, from one small 
hall to another until it had at last found a permanent 
habitation in the Tower Theatre. Thus was Martin 
dragged further and further into the net of literature. 
Where eventually it might lead him seemed impossible 
to tell. 

He grew critical of the acting at the Tower Theatre. 
There he saw men work their artistic medium to a 
nicety as a means of creating laughter or gloom. He 
listened to the character in each succeeding play, and 
knew that theirs surely was not the speech of the peasant. 
It had the ring of the peasant’s speech, and retained its 
turn of beauty, but it was not the speech of the men 
who went into Glannidan every evening and remained 
drinking in the gloom of the pubs. . . He listened to 
their humour, but it was the humour which comes from 
flights of the mind and the humour he had known in 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


78 

Glannanea was something which came most often from 
a petty satisfaction of some low spite when one man 
got the better of another through the exercise of a 
little animal cunning. It was seldom that anyone 
laughed in Glannidan, but they were always grinning. 
He saw the tragedies wherein one man or woman was 
made to possess a little nobility of soul and he felt that 
this was really a lie for in that part of Ireland that he 
knew he had never experienced such a thing. In one 
of their walks from the theatre, after which they usually 
remained far into the night wandering up and down 
Grafton Street among the groups of soft-eyed women, 
he spoke of this to O’Hanlon, who sought to uplift his 
mind from such sordid realities by the creation of ro- 
mantic visions for the enjoyment of his mind. . . 
He laughed loudly when O’Hanlon told him that there 
were people who believed that the Tower has been too 
hard on Ireland. 

He began to seek the reflex of his dreams of beauty 
in the life around him. He sought it on his walks across 
St. Stephen’s Green in the mornings, when the water 
was still clean beneath the ducks and the dew still 
bright upon the flowers. He sought it in the picture 
galleries of Dublin, where he would often remain gazing 
for a long time upon a picture of nude beauty. . . But 
turning from these things which were half lifeless, half 
meaningless, his unquiet soul sought it in the reality 
of the half wild girl who came every evening at dusk to 
tidy his room. 

More than ever did he seek it in the Library where 
at the behest of O’Hanlon he read the poetry of Oscar 
Wilde and Ernest Dowson and studied the art of 
Aubrey Beardsley. . . He grew to have a longing to 


THE DREAMER 


79 

write something, and more often was he occupied now 
in the Library of evenings with a sheet of foolscap, 
not always the same sheet, however, to which he was 
endeavouring to transfer his vision of life. . . He 
dreamt of being some day of the company of those 
Irish writers of his own time whom he often saw so 
busily engaged over sheets of manuscript. . . He had 
begun in rivalry of Brian Doyle, the fellow who was 
looked upon as a writer in Glannidan. Sean O’Hanlon 
sometimes laughed at his efforts now, more often was 
he held by the power of some striking and original 
phrase: . . . 

“You have the roots of the matter in you, Duignan,” 
he said one evening, “but these little snatches are but 
the filaments of the dream. They are distinguished 
by an attempt to attain beauty through a certain coarse- 
ness of thought. You would have to live the peasant 
out of yourself, I fancy, before you could hope to be 
remembered among the elect of these shelves. However 
you have life before you, and your handling of life 
might make a writer of you in the end. Yet, it might 
be better on the whole if you did not permit the dream 
to spoil your life.” 

However, it was the dream that had taken possession 
of Martin’s soul. As he moved in and out of the College 
he was no part at all of the business of that place. 
He was one whose eyes were fixed upon the distant 
summits. He had used what pocket money remained 
in his possession to still further correct the peasant 
in his appearance until now, in his neat grey suit, he 
looked not at all unlike a city-bred young man. . . 
Then something happened. They held a general class 
examination at the College, and Martin cut a sorry 


8o 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


figure when the results came out. Mr. Cullen came up 
to him, his little red eyes aflame behind his glasses and 
his beard looking remarkably fierce. 

“What the hell have you been doing with your time 
or is this a damned piece of tomfoolery ?” he said, rustling 
the papers in Martin’s eyes. 

“I thought you knew, that being your business,” said 
Martin, quietly. 

“Well, Mr. Duignan, avic, wait till you see what will 
happen when your guardian, Father Clarke, hears of 
this idleness or villainy, or whatever it is. I have already 
written him.” 

So far had Martin advanced in the mood of the 
dreamer that he hardly seemed to hear the words 
which were being addressed to him, but this connection 
of Father Clarke with this circumstance of his life 
recalled him to remembrance of Glannidan. . . That 
evening when he went to the National Library he piled 
his table with those books which usually brought him 
interest and excitement, but soon found that neither 
feeling would descend upon him. There was no per- 
formance at the Tower Theatre this evening to which 
he might go and fall to thinking as he sat looking 
vacantly at some peasant play wherein some effeminate 
actor was endeavouring to impersonate some character 
he knew well in the flesh in Glannidan and Glannanea, 
how he would like to jump upon the stage and, better 
suited as he was in knowledge, temperament, and build 
of body, give the character its perfect interpretation. 
So he returned to Mrs. McQuestion’s and fell into chat 
with Montgomery, the carpenter, and Garrig, the 
Socialist, who were standing just inside the window, 
their heads bent low upon their chests, looking out at 


THE DREAMER 


81 


a smoky drizzle which hung gloomily over the muddy 
street. Not a word was passing between them. Like 
statues so immovable were they, each sunk to the chin 
in his own separate hell. He went into the kitchen 
where the smell of the miscellaneous cheap food was 
heavy in the air. It was a curious stink in which he 
felt himself unconsciously searching for what constituent 
was uppermost. The half clad girl was in the scullery 
washing up the tea things. He sank down wearily on 
the old, springless sofa behind the table, and she gave 
him a burning smile as she wrung the dish cloth. . . 
But his mind was back again this evening among the 
boreens and by the old gate with Lucy Flynn. . . Curi- 
ous, he thought, what an enormous change the city had 
already effected in him. . . 

The girl put on her shawl and moved close to him 
as she went to pass out. He looked up from his thinking 
and their eyes met. She dallied about the kitchen 
as he yawned and moved towards the door which led 
upstairs. 

“Where's Mrs. McQuestion?" he said. 

“She's away over doing the indulgence, sir; you know, 
sir, this is the last evening; she won't be in for ages yet, 
for she's awful fond of praying." 

It was the first time that either had spoken so many 
words to the other, and both seemed to feel relieved 
that the dumbness of desire had at last been ended. 

In the morning there was a letter awaiting him on the 
greasy table from Father Clarke. It told, with its 
laboured periods almost of a parish priest's letter to 
the papers, how in accordance with a communication 
from Mr. Cullen it had been decided to withdraw him 


82 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


from the College, or at least to withdraw the money that 
was keeping him there. 

“And all the money that is after being spent on you,” 
the letter went on, “and your poor mother and all, and 
your sister after being married to Jamesey Cassels and 
she in a delicate state of health already. Indeed you 
ought to be ashamed of yourself and you nearly three 
months in college.” 

After moping about in a condition of empty bewilder- 
ment all day he turned that night towards the Tower 
Theatre. 


THE DREAMER 


S3 


V 

F ROM his enthusiasm for the Tower Theatre and 
its plays the present expedition had emerged. 
He had made a careful study of the way in which Irish 
peasants were portrayed at the Tower until the fancy 
had grown on him that he could play such parts prob- 
ably better than these actors. And seeing that they 
relied upon their very lack of technical accomplishment 
for the best part of their reputation his lack of working 
knowledge of the theatre could not prove a very serious 
handicap. So, just as the darkness was beginning to 
creep in around Dublin, he turned his steps towards 
the Tower Theatre. By the circuitous way of various 
dirty back streets did he go until he found himself at 
length standing outside the stage door. As he drew 
near he saw that the fanlight was illuminated, and this 
fact told him that although it was a night upon which 
no performance was taking place the theatre was in- 
habited. For about twenty minutes he walked and 
re-walked the narrow footpath by the door with extraor- 
dinary feelings of uncertainty jumping through his 
mind. . . Then, urged by a fateful impulse, he pushed 
the bell. 

The stage door was opened by a lady who might be 
one of the actresses, he thought, so nervous did her 
imperious manner make him. Martin was left to close 
the door. Half afraid he moved very slowly down a 
short stairway. The darkness of the place seemed to 
hold gloomy foreshadowings of this new and mysterious 
kind of life into which he was deliberately walking. 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


His nostrils were assailed by a cave-like smell, and he 
saw what he took to be stage properties suspended from 
the roof, and miscellaneous things which made attempts 
to reach them from the ground like stalagmites and 
stalactities. 

Martin made an enquiry for the stage manager, whom 
he considered to be the proper man to see, and soon 
that person appeared switching on the light as he came. 
In the sudden light he appeared spectral. His head was 
little and oldish, but he had the light body of a boy. 
He began to evince a kind of mechanical stage smile as 
Martin set out to recognise in him the stage manager of 
the Tower Theatre. He said his name was Mr. Lawlor. 
There was a kind of condescension in his tones as he 
chose certain moments in which to speak. 

“So you wish to become a member of the Tower 
Company ?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, then, you must see Mr. Leonard Thompson, 
who has all to do with the artistic side of the manage- 
ment. Come this way!” 

Together they ascended the steep, straight stairs to 
the office. The mind of Martin was really agitated 
so near was he now to the presence of one whom he had 
always taken to be a very great man. Mr. Leonard 
Thompson, playwright and manager of the Tower 
Theatre, was seated at his desk. To Martin he appeared 
as another young, old man. When he rose from his 
chair he looked most wondrously tall and spare of 
build. His eyebrows grew in a peculiar way which 
seemed to give him an expression of constant and intense 
surprise. This, combined with a certain delicate and 
apologetic method of movement, communicated the 


THE DREAMER 


85 

impression that he was surprised by the very fact of 
his own existence. Mr. Lawlor introduced Martin to 
Mr. Leonard Thompson and then very silently slipped 
out of the office upon his rubber heels, and Mr. Thomp- 
son displayed an air of excessive boredom as he waited 
for Martin to make known his business. 

“I have called to know if you could find a job for 
me in the Tower Theatre; ” 

Mr. Thompson continued remote as he glanced over 
some typewritten sheets in his hand. 

“A job ! ” he at last plucked up courage to question, 
“a job as an actor?” 

“Yes, a job as an actor,” affirmed Martin. 

By way of comment or reply Mr. Thompson made an 
unaccountable noise which Martin imagined must be 
his clever although curious conception of laughter. 
Then he said: 

“You are probably aware that we here are different 
from other theatres.” 

Martin nodded and said that he was aware of this. 

“Our players,” proceeded the manager, “fit so per- 
fectly into our plays. As a matter of fact they are 
specially constructed for the plays and the plays specially 
constructed for them. Take the case of a certain 
person for example, who writes by far the most of the 
plays we produce here. He is quite unable to write 
a line of his lines without a constant manipulation in 
his mind of the character who is destined to deliver 
it — I mean the line. From the very moment of its 
conception the dramatically contrived personality of 
the character is identified with the established person- 
ality of the player. Furthermore, a physical corres- 
pondence is instituted. If the player possesses a lisp 


S6 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


it must be shown that as a result of a black curse or 
some other piece of fatalism the corresponding character 
in the play was born lisping; if he be small the stature 
of the character must be reduced to correspond. You 
may probably marvel at the detail of this person for 
he is marvellously attentive to detail. The most in- 
teresting arrangement, invented by him and perfected by 
me is one of the secrets of our phenomenal success as an 
Art Theatre. I assure you we have gone one better than 
the Greeks. They were frightfully keen on the unities 
of place and time: we pin our faith to the unity of 
identity. This is, as I have already explained, the artistic 
mergence of the player’s personality in the personality of 
the character he is supposed to embody.” 

This quiet flow of persuasive eloquence was fast 
convincing Martin in the opinion he had always held 
of this great young man. But Mr. Thompson had not 
yet concluded. 

“Now, Duignan” (the sudden familiarity was amazing) 
“I look upon you as splendid material for a peasant 
player. That Irish face of yours with the addition 
of some artificial side-whiskers would make you in 
London or anywhere the typical Irishman— the Irish 
Paddy so dear to the political cartoonist of my child- 
hood days. Also you have the agricultural, uncouth 
swing, and the rich, melancholy Celtic voice changing 
to a perfectly natural and vulgar brogue. In fact, so 
far as the Tower Theatre is concerned, you are ‘the 
business.’ ” 

Martin felt almost confused by these compliments. He 
had found it so very easy after all his foolish fears to 
become a member of the Tower Company. 

“We have here the manuscript of a new play which 


THE DREAMER 87 

we intend to produce in a few weeks' time. It is a 
Cork play, and you know what Cork plays are." 

Martin said he knew. 

“Well, in this play, The End of Edward Corrigan , 
a certain part occurs, that of a heavy, loutish drunkard, 
which would suit you better than any man I ever 
knew." 

Martin smiled because of the compliment and the 
anticipation. 

“I admire your eagerness to take up this part, but 
we observe a certain slight formality here in the Tower. 
It is an examination in the reading of this test as we 
call it, about which a certain person is most particular.” 

Martin looked at the typewritten sheet which Mr. 
Thompson handed to him. It appeared just like the 
well-known “Advice to Playwrights submitting plays to 
the Tower Theatre,” and was a list of phrases prevalent 
in Tower Theatre plays. 

“Now you must read these phrases aloud for me, 
giving particular attention to the intonation” said Mr. 
Thompson, with a kind of aged concern strangely alien 
in so young a man. 

Martin, in his eagerness, at once- began to read: 

“And she a woman with a big tongue on her a yard 
long, that does be always prattling.” 

“It’s what I do be always thinking, lady of the house, 
if only you’d let a man in to stop along with you.” 

“It’s a quare world, and a dark night, surely. God 
help us all ! ” 

“It’s what I do be thinking, and it’s what I do be 
saying.” 

“Would you say him now to be in any way cracked 
or wrong in the head?” 


88 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


“No bloody fear!” 

“Ah indade I’m not. A’m going for a wee dandher 
down Sandy Row.” 

“For I have sucked its sorrows’ sap out of the moon.” 

“Say, kid, this is a rotten town.” 

“All those gods whom their swarthy servant, Time, 
hath not yet slain.” 

“That will do,” said the manager. “Your rendering 
is in every way uniquely perfect. Allow me to congratu- 
late you already as a worker in our midst.” 

“I may, then, consider myself engaged,” ventured 
Martin. 

“You may begin to congratulate yourself on the 
honour that is about to be conferred upon you — the 
honour of permission to appear in the public performance 
of a Tower Play with our famous players. Of course, 
I would have you know that jobs with their detest- 
able pecuniary rewards as understood in the world 
of business are quite unknown amongst us. We’re 
artists.” 

The last word of his speech seemed to hold a peculiar 
fascination as it fell from the thin lips of the manager, 
who stood there drooped artistically above his desk 
like some wan flower at the close of the day. Martin 
took the square, crackling sheets, which constituted 
his part in The End of Edward Corrigan. It was 
a longish, difficult-looking part. . . The manager must 
have been strongly convinced by his rendering of the 
test lines. . . But of a sudden the peasant had come 
back to life in him. What was an artist? Was he a 
strange being, different from the human species who did 
not feed or clothe himself or need a place whereon 
to lay his head. . . The subtle, psychological manager 


THE DREAMER 89 

seemed to glimpse what was passing through his mind 
so he spoke abruptly: 

“The call is for eleven in the morning when you must 
attend to be formally introduced to your future col- 
leagues. Also we then start work upon rehearsals of The 
End of Edward Corrigan ” 

So saying he put on his great hat of literature and 
moved towards the door of the office. Martin followed 
respectfully behind, and they went down the steep stairs. 
As they went past the open door of the Green Room 
the new actor of the Tower Theatre had a momentary 
impression of long-haired, brilliant men and vain, splen- 
did women. Their gay chatter flowed out and beat upon 
the quiet stillness which reigned amid the stalag- 
mites and stalactites. . . Mr. Leonard Thompson led 
the way into the clear night air. They spoke little, and 
in a few minutes were in (TConnell Street. It was de- 
serted, and they parted amid its silence. Martin glanced 
back just once and had a quick glimpse of the manager 
of the Tower Theatre, darkly silhouetted against the 
lamp-light. The spare figure of him grew more and 
more shadowy as he went swinging his stick across the 
bridge and down Westmoreland Street. 


go 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


VI 


FEW mornings later, as he went out without his 



accustomed bundle of books, Mrs. McQuestion 


called to him and said: 

“Is it true that you’ve got a job?” 

“Yes,” he said, very quietly. 

“Look at that, now!” went on the landlady. “Sure 
and I always knew you’d have luck. I used to say 
a little prayer for you every evening in the chapel.” 

He turned away from the grime of his dwelling-place 
and was soon in Grafton Street. He had already 
purchased a cane with which he tapped nonchalantly 
upon the edge of the sidewalk in imitation of a man- 
nerism of Albert Donohoe, the leading actor of the 
Tower. 

It was certainly a curious experience for him who 
had for so long been a part of God’s reality among 
the ploughed fields with the sun and the wide sky over 
them to be coming into this place of artificiality every 
morning to be trained how to act the part of a peasant, 
which he really was. Mr. Leonard Thompson spent much 
time in telling him just exactly how to speak this speech 
and that in the most approved Tower fashion, and Mr. 
Leonard Thompson, with his thin, spidery figure and 
pale romantic face always appeared very remote from 
the clay. 

The End of Edward Corrigan gave scope for a 
certain amount of forcible impersonation on his part. 
Many an evening in Glannanea as he had leaned across 
the road gate lifting his eye occasionally to look at the 


THE DREAMER 


9i 


drunkards hurrying into Glannidan he had to a certain 
extent entered into their longing, although he had 
never really become one of them. For he knew 
the tortures which drove them to blot from their 
minds in the black flow of porter the blind agony which 
came out of the clay. His sister and Austin Fagan! 
It was the curious extension of that sad thing that had 
brought him to the To^er Theatre. Now it was the 
remembrance of his passion on that day in Glannidan 
Board-room that was enabling him to interpret this part 
in this play. Thus had he already begun to make art 
out of his life after the fashion that had been partially 
suggested to him by Sean O’Hanlon. He was rapidly 
surprising even Mr. Leonard Thompson. 

“I say, Duignan, the way you let these ‘blasts’ and 
‘bloodys’ out of your mouth is simply magnificent. Your 
performance as a porter drunkard is unique. Hitherto 
the drunkards of the stage were supposed to have pro- 
duced their condition with wine or whiskey, but you are 
the first porter drunkard. That’s right, allow yourself 
to dribble a little, as if you were about to vomit, and 
as you make your big exit lurch forward a little so as 
to communicate to the audience the effect of vomit which 
takes place just outside the door. That will be awfully 
good, and ought to please a certain person immensely. 
For a writer of peasant romance he has a surprising grasp 
of the essentials of realism. Do you know what he said 
to me the other day?” 

Mr. Leonard Thompson here laughed one of his long, 
peculiar laughs. 

“We were rehearsing Barney Shaw’s cowboy play, you 
know,” when he said: 

“I don’t doubt but that Albert Donohoe and 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


92 

the rest of them will make up all right in tliis 
curious little lapse of poor old Shaw's. They will be 
gotten-up according to the best ideas of the cinema 
in the togs that are supposed to be fashionable with 
those supposed cowboys in those supposed parts of 
America. Of course no such thing really exists, and 
I don’t see why we should make this move to emulate 
the picture palace. We who have maintained a con- 
tinuous procession of strange peasants across this stage 
should endeavour to give an unique reading. The 
cowboy represents the romance of America; the Tower 
peasant is our romance. To institute a combination 
of both might well be considered a stroke of genius. 
What would you say now to making our cinema-clad 
actors spit out as they take their places in the jury 
box?” 

A burst of his queer merriment again took possession 
of Mr. Leonard Thompson, but Martin remained blinking 
stupidly in quest of the point of the joke. . . He had 
a sudden glimpse of the dirty evening crowd in the 
widow Kelly’s pub. . . 

“But in the girls’ face?” he said, hopelessly, 
snatching at a scruple which might remove from his 
imagination this pictured indignity to a lady. Mr. 
Leonard Thompson now became completely excruciated. 

It was even thus that many a morning would pass, 
and there were moments when Martin had qualms 
as to the loss of time which all this stupid rehearsing 
seemed. The salary he got for playing the part of 
the peasant at the Tower was very little by the side of 
what he might make by playing the part of the peasant 
in reality. His reading of the part that had been given 
him in The End of Edward Corrigan was the in- 


THE DREAMER 


93 


evitable outcome of certain circumstances in his life 
and was successful beyond even his own expectations. 
. . .Yet did there seem to be some mighty power 
sneering at him just as they sneered in Glannidan 
whenever one attempted to do anything which placed 
him beyond them. He could always imagine that the 
crowd who loafed outside the widow Kelly’s after 
closing time would sneer at him in this way if they saw 
him now. . . 

But in these days Sean O’Hanlon proved a good friend. 
He kept alive in Martin that rich and fine enthusiasm 
which might otherwise have perished in these circum- 
stances. He spoke in lofty words of the nobility of the 
drama: he induced him to read Ibsen, Strindberg 
and Maeterlinck, and strove to surround him even in the 
Library with an atmosphere of the theatre and of 
art. Yet in spite of all this attention the interest 
of Martin was gradually waning. This was not life, 
and the strength of the clay would be continually surging 
up in his veins urging him to primitive combat. 
Often on Sundays when he went walking up to the 
hills with O’Hanlon he could feel himself descending 
from his dream to talk quite naturally of the land, often 
falling dangerously near the level which was continually 
maintained by those who went along the boreens of an 
evening and into Glannidan. O’Hanlon would be de- 
pressed by this change in his friend and not a word would 
pass between them as they came back into Dublin by 
way of Dundrum. 

It was the night of the first production of The 
End of Edward Corrigan , and Martin was playing 
his part. It might be more truly said that he was 


94 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


appearing as himself, the self that might have emerged 
eventually had he fallen into the life of Glannidan. . . 
He was already filled by the joyous comfort of applause. 
He could feel that he had made a success of his first 
part in the Tower Theatre, and when the play was over 
he saw the author come up to speak to him. . . But 
the applause which greeted his appearance in response 
to the call of “Author! Author!” had left the young 
man speechless. His hand was limp as he shook 
Martin’s hand. . . 

A little later as he went up the stairway to his dressing- 
room he met Ellen O’Connor, a girl who had joined the 
Tower Company even as he had joined it, only a day 
or two before. For a few minutes she stood there com- 
plimenting him in the dusk of the stairway. There 
seemed to be a blessed tenderness in her words as she 
praised his playing. 


THE DREAMER 


95 


VII 

T HE players had all gone to their dressing-rooms 
to remove their make-up. From the office one 
could hear the jingle of the counters as the manager 
ran them out of the long, tin box in which they had 
been collected. The little noise was continuous and 
exciting, but it soon subsided or was lost in a milder 
kind of noise — the counting of money. Then the office 
door was closed with a business-like slam. By this 
time Martin had removed his stage appearance and, 
coming out of his dressing-room, he collided with the 
stage carpenter, who was also electrician and night- 
watchman, now going about ostentatiously, closing all 
the doors and putting out all the lights in the Tower 
Theatre. 

Now into the room they called the Green Room, 
where a gas stove gave an air of comfort and homeliness, 
came all the gods of the Tower Theatre — Mrs. Comasky, 
the charwoman, was getting tea for them down at 
another gas stove in the scene-dock. First came Mr. 
Leonard Thompson. He threw himself with an air 
of extreme weariness into a comfortable chair by the 
fire and his long legs sprawled menacingly over half 
the floor. The others, the girls and the rest, crowded 
in from the dressing-rooms. Mr. Leonard Thompson 
allowed his gaze to wander away and remain fixed upon 
some matter in his mind which he saw reflected in the 
odorous flame. . . His excessive remoteness would 
seem to proclaim the possession of personality. Around 
him arose the gabble of the others. They talked of 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


96 

where they had got their laughs and how, the bits of 
the play that had “gone” and the bits that had not 
“gone.” . . . They had seen Sir Horace Plunkett 
and George Russell in the first row of the stalls. . . 

Then the conversation suddenly put on an aspect 
of brilliance. One of the actors, out of his talk, began 
to develop his favourite theory of stage production. 
It was in turn attacked and commended by those around 
and so the conversation ran rapidly down many a 
bye-way of cleverness. . . There was a girl who laughed, 
now and then; a girl with dark eyes and hair the colour 
of oak-bark who had often played the part of a queen. 
. . . Her laughter was like that of no other woman 
that Martin had ever heard. It was mirthful certainly, 
seeing that it sprang out of her enjoyment of the chat, 
yet it seemed, somehow, to hold a tragic ring as if the 
dead queens who had been hurried through great dooms 
had given some of themselves to her personality even 
as she played them. . . In this place she was possessed 
of a certain majesty which was in such rich contrast 
to the poor, timid figure that Ellen O’Connor cut as 
she sat like a little hunted bird upon the chintz-covered 
sofa furthest from the gas stove. . . The sudden 
brilliance of this place would seem to have crushed her, 
and besides she had merely “come on” with the crowd 
in The End of Edward Corrigan. . . 

Yet, even in this moment Martin felt that it was 
through the misty veil of the impression already made 
upon him by this girl that he would see the Tower in 
the reality it stood for in his own life and in the life of 
the Ireland of his time. His mind must gradually 
move to a vision very different from that of Mr. George 
Moore although there were bits of Ave, Salve , Vale 


THE DREAMER 


97 


which already appeared to him, in the light of the ex- 
perience he was rapidly gathering, very brilliant and very 
true. . . 

But there was Ellen, a small personality very prob- 
ably, to think of as lighting any man’s life towards a 
lofty regard. Yet, why was she here and why was he 
here? Why only because this movement which had 
sprung like a magic flame around a great personality 
was something powerful and compelling in the life of 
their country, and both she and he had answered to Its 
impulse. Here surely was a thing of beauty and of per- 
manence which would endure past the petty tumults and 
the ignoble dooms of successive political parties, no 
matter how greatly clamorous they might be in mean 
moments of violent triumph. It was queer to think how 
each of them in turn claimed to be the representatives of 
Ireland, and the very cleanest products of their nation- 
ality. Yet here was something more nobly repre- 
sentative, cleaner, more intense and spiritual, whose 
idols were not of clay but of bronze. . . And out of all 
their prate no solid achievement like this had come. 
In a brilliant, ironic moment it seemed particularly 
meet to Martin that a theatre, a place for play-acting, 
was the only reality that had come out of all the play- 
acting of Ireland. . . They had never reached the old 
house in College Green wherein they might express 
themselves in eloquent periods for the admiration of 
a wondering world. It was in this place after all that 
they had been truly expressed, the roots of them heroi- 
cally in the old Gaelic civilization and the poor seed 
they had run to to-day in a once lovely garden that 
had gone back to the wild. Here in tragedy, 
comedy, farce, through all these variations of a noble 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


98 

art the breed of them had been shown at the bidding 
of a master hand. And it might be that it was through 
this commingled exemplification a perfect form of 
National life would come to be at length determined 
and that all the other attempts would collectively make 
the subject for a tremendous farce to be played here, 
all Ireland, intellectually emancipated, its enthusiastic 
audience. . . That would be a great play and a great 
night, surely, God help us all! 

Martin felt himself wondering for a moment whether 
Ellen O’Connor’s movement with the impulse that had 
gathered him to its wild breast had been coloured by 
any of these thoughts. . .But there was the manager 
merely bored amid the smoke from his cigarette. . . 

Just then the door of the Green Room opened and 
a tall, dark man came into the midst of the little crowd. 
He surveyed the accustomed scene, with a lifted, almost 
grandiose expression. . . His hands were solemnly 
knotted behind him. No one moved excepting the man- 
ager, who seemed to stir out of his trance. A few words 
upon a matter of business passed quietly between the 
two tall men. 

Then entered the others whom George Moore might 
have written about very cleverly in Hail and Fare- 
well. First came a certain person followed eagerly by 
a member of the Bureaucracy in Ireland, a minor 
poet and an American journalist. The fame of his 
plays was manifest in the appearance of a certain 
person. The member of the Bureaucracy as an inter- 
national figure needed no description. The minor poet 
was a mere caricature in his verse as in his person of 
the tall, dark man. He now began to read a scrap of 
verse he had recently written on the back of an envelope, 


THE DREAMER 


99 


and the other considering all Dublin verse to be a sincere 
flattery of himself listened passively, the noise of the 
thing sounding in the mystical distance. . . The minor 
poet’s lines had the effect of lifting him out of his dark 
humour and he laughed heartily as the American 
journalist manifested himself, note-book in hand. He 
was one of the almost innumerable Americans who had 
written books on the Tower Theatre. This was how 
such books came to be written. A little hard-faced, 
insignificant-looking man occurred like this in the most 
inoffensive, apologetic way. He went prying about 
with a note-book in his hand, listening as it were at 
keyholes with the note-book in his hand. One scarcely 
noticed the little man at it until in his surprising 
American way he came into the possession of more 
knowledge of the institution than anybody connected 
with the Tower Theatre. Then the book appeared, 
a detailed compendium giving the inner history of every 
single play. It threw a powerful searchlight upon the 
activities of everyone connected with literature in 
Ireland, and the funny little man made a lot of 
money out of it. The literary people liked the 
compilers of such books immensely for they would 
seem to have been sent into the world for no other 
reason than that no man might ever be able to 
escape the knowledge that there were “great writers” 
in Ireland. 

The member of the Bureaucracy and the minor poet 
drifted back to a certain person. The poet began to 
beg of him to accept a play for the Tower. He put the 
poet off with a joke, but it was not so funny although 
the reasons for the subconscious rivalry were perfectly 
obvious. Both were peasant romancists. He might 


100 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


have been successful had he been a Cork realist or 
Bernard Shaw. 

The actors and the rest had sunk into insignificance. 
It all appeared very futile as a part of life suddenly 
leaping up to overshadow Martin’s vision of the Tower, 
futilities flowed in upon futilities until all the people in 
the Green Room were enveloped. Their heads were bob- 
bing up and down like corks upon the sea of futility 
that life had caused to flow in around them. . . 

So it appeared to Ellen O’Connor and Martin Duignan, 
who sat apart, she very timid and very silent, he rebel- 
lious, passionate, wildly wrathful that life should always 
show its immediate strength even as in Glannidan and 
Glannanea. 

Her eyes sought his. Until to-night they had never 
spoken, when she had stopped on the stair to congratu- 
late him, and now their minds were working into the most 
wonderful sympathy with one another. Perhaps both 
had dreamt of Art as a way of breaking the mean bonds 
of Life, but in this place of Art they now felt bonds 
which cut deeper into the mind. Life seemed a hard 
thing to be rid of without the doom of the grave. 

Upon the wall, just by the telephone, was a pencil 
sketch of a writer, a really great writer who had given 
of himself to all the power and beauty the Tower had 
created. Ellen glanced from the portrait of the man who 
had written the wild sweet words to the face of Martin. 
He had the same strong face, the same dark hair. Both 
men had affinities with the peasant. 

Even though their chat upon the stairs had been a 
short one he had managed to tell her how he dreamt 
of writing truly of the peasant some day. “I shall be 
the first real peasant author,” he had said. After her 


THE DREAMER 


IOI 


hard day of toil in that wretched drapery establishment 
in George’s Street she had read a great deal, and so had 
fine sympathy now with this young man who had spoken 
of writing. She had always fancied an author as a man 
apart from life — a kind of God-like man. It was such 
a brave thing too to think of catching the crooked, 
grinning fabric of life and remoulding it nearer to the 
heart’s plan. . . Her eyes sought his again. . . She be- 
gan to have the most extraordinary fancies. . . 

Now there seemed to be just only the two of them 
in this room of art and beauty, of mirth and loveliness 
in the Tower Theatre, while slowly beyond the misty out- 
lines of the others, sheer from the clay, seemed to rise 
the figure of a tall, dark man in bronze who had written 
great lines of love for Kathleen-ni-Houlihan. 


102 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


VIII 

H E loved to hear Ellen murmur her praise of his 
ideas as they went walking together across Dublin 
after their nights at the Tower. In her company he 
began to hear the definite voice of that ambition which 
had already come to him only dumbly. It grew to seem 
more curious to his own mind that his thought should 
have shaped itself so definitely; he who had so recently 
come away from the clay had already uplifted himself. 
There were many nights when Dublin seemed to hold 
a hundred glimpses of Fairyland. . . 

Then he wandered into the acquaintance of Phelim 
O’Brien, the poet. Having mistaken him, as well anyone 
might, for the bronze figure of the Tower, he went up 
to speak to him upon some matter of business in the 
vestibule of the theatre. The poet did not appear quite 
flattered by the mistake that Martin had made. Later 
in the evening they met just outside the theatre and 
walked into O’Connell Street together. Phelim O’Brien 
would seem to have carefully copied the appearance of 
the great poet, the soft, wavy hat of black, the green, 
romantic overcoat, and all the personal glamour of the 
other man. Even before they reached O’Connell Street 
he had withered with contemptuous criticism both a cer- 
tain person as a dramatist and the great poet as a poet. 
Then he began to speak of himself and of his own work. 

“Come in here!” he said, stopping suddenly outside 
the door of a rather dilapidated public-house. “This 
is the Daffodils.” Martin had a glimpse of lacquered 
vases with daffodils in them filling all the window. 


THE DREAMER 


103 


“It was I who discovered this pub. One day as I 
moped here in search of the last line of a sonnet, 
I spotted the daffodils, but then only a dirty pint 
tumblerful of them in the window. It was a windy 
day in April, with a lofty, rolling sky! Wordsworth! 
I shouted in sheer delight; then the last line of my 
sonnet came to me and I went into the pub to celebrate. 
I made a suggestion to the proprietor. He seemed 
flattered. A Parisian cafe of a dirty Dublin public- 
house! It was an amazing conception. But here you 
are, the result, little marble-topped tables and daffodils 
always in the window, artificial daffodils, of course, for 
no natural flower I ever heard of could bloom in this 
atmosphere.’ , 

The reek of porter assailed them as they entered. 
It seemed a queer place for a poet to be going. The 
drink he called for had a queer name, but as it did not 
sound like any of the drinks Martin had ever heard in 
Glannidan he thought that necessarily it must be 
harmless. Although he knew no French, he thought 
that it had a French sound somehow. Phelim O’Brien 
looked around and appeared disappointed to see the 
place so deserted. But immediately he revived his own 
interest in himself. 

“This is where I have written most of my books. 
Of course, now that I think of it, it’s too many bloody 
books I have written. I have flooded the market 
against myself.” 

Martin smiled, for now it seemed that a book was 
only a small thing, a kind of effort that a man might 
throw off every week or two. It did not now appear 
as a solid and great achievement. . . It might be very 
humble too, for, as they parted some hours later, after 


104 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


they had passed and re-passed through the groups in 
Grafton Street, Phelim O’Brien spoke with a kind of 
wistful intimacy of a mean street. . . . Martin remem- 
bered all he had read of impecunious authors. He too 
was of the same condition, and although he could not 
as yet be described as an author, he lived not far from 
this very street. He made an appointment with O’Brien 
at “The Daffodils” next day. 

“You’ll meet me there,” said O’Brien at parting, “and 
I’ll introduce you to some of the choicest spirits of the 
age. I may be able to put you in the way of getting a 
bit of copy, that is, if you’re engaged upon a novel or 
anything. By the look of you I should say that it is a 
novel. You may as well know now that no man is 
allowed into our circle unless he has written a book or 
has a book in ‘the making.’ ” 

Next day in the afternoon they met in “The Daffo- 
dils.” The dark pub was full of queer-looking men, 
sitting around the greasy, marble-topped tables drinking 
bottled stout. Phelim O’Brien described them in 
whispers to Martin. . . Their talk as it came to him, 
in almost blasphemous snatches, was of books and 
books. 

“This kind of thing goes on all day in ‘The Daffo- 
dils,’ and when these are not here their places are taken 
by brothers of the craft of criticism. Criticism was 
almost a lost art in Dublin until they arose. Now any 
day and all day you may here hear a valuation and a 
transvaluation of the literature of our time. Not a man 
amongst them but has a book in the making, verse, a 
novel, a critical study, a play. I am the only published 
author, consequently they have a kind of mingled envy 
and respect for me.” 


THE DREAMER 


105 

Phelim and Martin soon joined the crowd, and 
immediately what might have emerged as Martin’s 
estimate of “The Daffodils” was made shapeless by 
talk. One by one they attacked every writer of the 
day, the great poet of the Tower coming in for a most 
determined disembowelling on all sides. . . The sym- 
posium rose and fell upon successive waves of bottled 
stout. Phelim O’Brien grew more silent as he grew 
more pleased. The annihilation of all other authors 
stood for his magnification. He seemed to sit very 
still. . . Then he fell down off the high stool and there 
was loud lamenting as to whether he had killed 
himself. . . One by one these men who had spent the 
brightness of the day in criticism of those who sought 
to find the beauty of the world passed out drunkenly 
into the dusk. . . And as each pilgrim passed there 
was a momentary silhouette of a nodding plume beside 
a bobbing head upon the frosted window glass of “The 
Daffodils.” 


io6 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


IX 

T O this queer place now came Martin as often as 
he had money to spare, for money was a necessity 
even among the Olympian Fields of “The Daffodils.” 
The “writers” of this Dublin decadence were none of 
them rich men although there were queer stories told 
of enormous sums that Phelim O’Brien had got for 
work he had sent to America. Many drinks were stood 
to Phelim on the strength of these stories. A night 
that such a story had gained stronger currency than 
usual would be a big night in the life of Phelim O’Brien, 
and he would leave the place immensely drunk. Next 
day all the great story would begin to dwindle and crum- 
ble and to appear suddenly as fabulous as any story of a 
legacy that had ever come from America. The fading 
of Phelim’s fortune was as pathetic as the fading of 
a dream, and, amid the gloom of it, surrounded by 
his friends of “The Daffodils,” he appeared almost 
a figure of tragedy, his head bent low upon his chest, 
and nothing save a great depression in the appearance 
of him. . . The whole scene would swim queerly before 
the vision of Martin, and again he would see the drunk- 
ards drowning their sorow in the widow Kelly’s pub 
in Glannidan over the death of a beast. . . Often 
he came here as if to enter into mourning thus for 
some part of himself that had died. . . And there 
was little doubt but that the beast had leaped to life 
in him here and more and more often he watched 
the window when the women with the plumes would 
be coming by. . . He seemed to have moved out of 


THE DREAMER 


107 


that world wherein lived such saints as Sean O’Hanlon. 
It was through this idealist he had glimpsed the 
beauty wherein great literature could be made 
too, and a man might make a thing of beauty out of 
his life. At the instigation of O’Hanlon he had read 
the poems of Padraic Pearse, Thomas McDonagh, and 
Alice Milligan whom he saw so often writing in the 
Library. And in his talks with Ellen O’Connor, too, 
on their way across the lamplit streets of Dublin after 
nights in the Tower, he had glimpses of the same 
shining hills. Both had moved up from the poor life 
of the clay to association with literature through the 
Tower. It was an influence in both their lives, although 
the working of the influence was in strangely contrasted 
ways. It was leading her far above life into a romantic 
way of thought, him down into life as if in search 
of a mode of expression, too, among the people of 
“The Daffodils,” who were often blinded to all beauty. 
They seemed to set great store by drink as an essential in 
giving a man breadth of outlook, vision, as they put 
it, and this obsession was particularly unfortunate in the 
case of Martin where there was more than a trace of 
hereditary craving. . . It was quite possible that his 
father, Arthur Duignan, during his famous visits to 
Dublin had spent long hours in some such pub, talking 
of books, with men who wore Dundreary whiskers and 
drinking bottled stout until the day had faded and the 
plumes had begun to pass by some such window. . . 
Yet still for love of Ellen there came grand thoughts 
both here in “The Daffodils” and in the Library 
which built up a fine piece of dreaming. . . Very often, 
too, in the vacant spaces of their night at the Tower 
he would tell her of the novel he was writing. But 


108 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

so far, in reality there was no novel at all. He was 
merely writing a story with his life, a story which might 
never come to be read. Once she suggested how all 
this time he was spending at the Tower was such waste. 
Their economy had been perfectly phrased by Mr. 
Leonard Thompson — they were artists. Often when 
he sat in “The Daffodils” taking a cheese sandwich 
and a bottle of stout, which formed his usual luncheon, 
he would become fully convinced of the dismal reality 
of his life. He would stand up and look at himself in 
the glass advertisements in a self-pitying way. The 
dapper appearance he had begun to cultivate when he 
first came to the Tower had somehow disappeared. 
His coat looked seedy, his trousers, to use an expression 
of “The Daffodils,” had already begun to resemble “the 
bearded breeches of the bard,” his felt hat was fading 
out of shape and his tie was frayed. . . When he sat 
down again he felt that he was humped heavily in his 
seat. He was ever more and more like some evening 
loafer in the widow Kelly’s. It seemed very difficult 
to fancy him as a Bohemian in a Parisian cafe. 

However, it was when he spoke that the difference 
in him became manifest. He talked with an easy grace 
acquired from association with the gods of the Tower 
Theatre and the companionship of Phelim O’Brien. He 
now possessed that full charm of manner which comes 
to the poet at some period of his life, the something 
of magical personality that wins the beloved and hence 
helps to create the image of beauty in his poems. Thus 
was he in different aspects outwardly to the crowd in 
“The Daffodils,” to Ellen O’Connor, and even to all 
the others at the Tower. Yet, inwardly, he knew 
himself to be no poet at all, but merely one who wore 


THE DREAMER 


109 


the wings of a lost spirit fluttering around the flame 
that must eventually burn him. Already was he 
scorched by the breath of hell. . . 

One night he came out to the door of “The Daffodils’’ 
and stood for a while on the pavement. A girl of 
striking carriage came by. She passed and re-passed 
him where he stood. He saw at once that she belonged 
to the class which is swung perilously between the 
stage and the streets. . . In a moment they were 
speaking of life and love and literature and passion 
as they went on through the crowds. He did not seem 
to feel the passing of time until they were walking some 
of the pleasant lanes around Dundrum. Some new 
rich spirit of adventure in his life seemed to hurry them 
along. Like two figures out of a realistic dream or a 
tragedy by Maeterlinck they crossed a grassy, starlit 
field. 


END OF BOOK II 



BOOK III 
THE PAGAN 



% 
























THE PAGAN 


113 


BOOK III 
THE PAGAN 
I 

H E spent the greater part of next day in the National 
Library. He had been given a pretty large part 
in a new play and the Library was the place where he 
usually went to memorise his lines. . .But the weari- 
ness of the world was already upon him and he turned 
from his work to write to Kitty Haymer, the girl of 
the night that had just passed into this clouded day. 
. . . And to-day he was a different man. Sean O’Hanlon 
thought surely that the glory of poetry had descended 
upon him as he sat writing in the Library. He seemed 
suddenly akin to all the poets who came there to write, 
to McDonagh and Pearse and Padraic Colum. Yet was 
he putting something of evil into this letter, something 
that pleased him, not as the equal in genius, but as the 
imitator in mannerism of Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, 
George Moore, and lesser writers of The Yellow Book. 
The curtains of his mind had changed from the golden 
haze of poetry to this yellow dream. He thought of the 
vase of withering daffodils in the pub of literature. In 
his eyes these grew to have an evil colour like Baude- 
laire’s Fleurs-de-Mal. . . 

He met Kitty very frequently. She kept a little 
memorandum in which their meetings were recorded. 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


114 

Her sketchy accounts of herself sounded like bits lifted 
bodily from a girl’s novel that had been written by a 
“daring” authoress. Once she told Martin that she was 
wealthy. A Russian nobleman who had burned 
himself to death for love of her had left her a great deal 
of money. . . They were passing into the Laurel 
Restaurant as she finished the story. Martin was 
worried by the thought that he had not sufficient money 
to stand a meal in keeping with her splendour, but 
suddenly she clutched him by the arm and put a handful 
of silver into his coat pocket. He was stunned a little, 
although relieved, for the possibility of a painful 
situation had been suddenly averted. And had not 
George Moore created a similar situation around the 
hero in Evelyn Innes? 

Yet after this quite unexpected fashion there arose 
about him a sense of comfort and well-being. Kitty 
began to invite him out to grand hotels in Kingstown 
and Bray. These were curious, cloudy adventures, 
hung mistily about the impudent glory of her sculptured 
pose. . . 

Sometimes she talked of England in her pleasant 
English accent; of quiet villages with their neat houses 
and trim lawns. There suddenly arose the picture 
of her moving against these surroundings and then it 
came out in her talk with him that she was a clergy- 
man’s daughter and that she was a divorced woman. 
At least she said that she had been divorced. These 
little stabs of information flashed out so casually that 
they scarcely shocked him into appreciation of the 
depth to which he had fallen, seeing that it was only a 
few months since he had left the clay. Yet the mixed 
circumstances of his present entanglement sometimes 


THE PAGAN 


”5 

suggested to his mind that he had arisen — a minister’s 
daughter, imagine! Again he saw Miss Alexandra Smyth, 
the daughter of the Rector of Glannidan, a tidy little 
person who dressed in white and kept a toy dog to 
run after her down the road. Often as he walked into 
Glannidan, his big boots scraping along the road, he had 
met her and pulled his cap sideways by way of salutation 
in the ancient feudal fashion. 

“He was a rough, horrible old scoundrel, who used 
to hurt me frightfully. It was my money that he 
married, the few hundreds that I have as income. 
He took me away from that quiet parsonage in Surrey 
where I was happy to the only life he could give me, 
the stage, and all the disgusting devils I met there. 
How I loathe to think of them with their filthy, womanish 
ways, but you, Martin, dearest, my great big peasant 
lover. . . ” 

In such talk did she reveal herself, and so his feelings 
of gradual disgust were mingled with feelings of ad- 
venturous exaltation. Yet he very often shuddered 
to think of what they would say of him in Glannidan 
now. . . 

His life was becoming rapidly more and more remote 
from that which a Christian gentleman should lead. 
But he was an Irish peasant, and this was how the 
brutality of the clay had chosen to express itself in him. 
“The Tower” had never put any such character on 
the stage as he was in reality; The Playboy of the 
Western World was a very feeble scoundrel indeed 
by comparison. . .If ever they should come to read 
about him in Glannidan or Glannanea how could they 
be angry? He was one of themselves, and his vivid 
literary expression in terms of life the publication of 


ii6 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

them before the world. . . Perhaps Brian Doyle would 
attempt an attack upon the book for the Ballycullen 
Gazette. It would abound in all the well-worn phrases 
which made up his style. . . “An outrage upon all 
creeds and classes,” “parishioners, respectable people are 
implicated.” “A cold blooded attack upon the Irish 
peasant and upon holy Ireland.” 

How they would enjoy that attack upon him in this 
old rag which was published every Thursday in Bally- 
cullen. As it was passed eagerly from hand to hand 
any single copy of the paper would grow limp and dirty 
as a dish-cloth. . . Indeed the word was singularly ap- 
posite as a description of the Ballycullen Gazette. It was 
certainly a dish-cloth in the hands of Brian Doyle. He 
used it to rub the dirt off from people who struck his 
fancy on to people who did not. 

Yet there were moments when Martin felt the immense 
punishment of his degradation. It sometimes seemed 
a very terrible thing that he should have been ordained 
to suffer like this, and merely because it had appeared 
particularly fitting to Fate that it was through him 
this dirty little place should be expressed before the 
world. He felt that the structure of an enormous tragedy 
was being reared about himself and Kitty Haymer. . . 
There were moments when she appeared essentially 
noble and great almost as the woman in a Greek play, 
and he too like (Edipus, because of the woman he had 
married. . . 

It often seemed particularly unfair that he who had 
never even mixed himself with the life of Glannidan 
and Glannanea should have been chosen to make this 
example of himself before the world. And Kitty 
Haymer, this pretty Englishwoman, what had she to 


THE PAGAN 


117 

do with all the dirt that had ever oozed from any place 
in Ireland? She hated Ireland with all the bigoted hatred 
of her nationality, yet she must be sacrificed and her 
beauty made to fade perhaps for sake of Ireland, because 
in a remote district of Ireland, until Martin Duignan 
had sprung from them, men had hidden their vileness in 
quiet ways. . . 

There were lucid moments when Martin thought of 
other gentry who might some day come to figure in 
this story. These were the clever critics who might 
review him, very timid Philistines whose aim in life was 
that they might never offend any kind of opinion either 
public or private. Their notices would be all after the 
same pattern, so that by reading one of them one 
would have read them all. . . To begin with, this was 
untrue to average Irish life, and that the author had 
putrefied his mind by reading Zola and that he had 
merely succeeded in perpetuating another sneer at Ire- 
land like the stuff they produced at the Tower 
Theatre ... he was the man with the muck-rake in 
his hand ... he had outraged the feelings of every 
lover of Ireland ... no such character as his hero, 
although it was almost a blasphemy of language to use 
the word in describing such a depraved character, had 
ever come out of Ireland or, in fact, out of anywhere 
but the brain or the book of Mr. Martin Duignan . . . 
if his mind was as bad as his book he was bound to 
end a thoroughly wicked life by his own hand. . . 

This he felt full well was likely to be his only reward 
from the Ireland of his time, for it was the poor reward 
that many others had won. 

“If you want to write, Duignan,” Phelim O’Brien 
had said to him, “you must come live with us, as the 


n8 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


saying is, you must descend to our level and become 
a swine for only then can you get your snout, so to speak, 
under the muck of life and root it up for the world 
to see.” 

Ellen O’Connor with the cleaner ambition she had 
raised up in him was very far from him in these days. 
... It was down this strange path he was walking 
the sad way of the writer now and even Sean O’Hanlon 
had lost his little influence over him. The season at 
the Tower was coming to an end, and instead of going 
on tour with the Company he was remaining here in 
Dublin with Kitty Haymer. They met every morning, 
and, day by day, she seemed to gain greater influence 
over him. She was continually by his side, pulling him 
down from every decent resolve to a negation almost of 
his will and personality. . . They left the summer sun- 
light and went into dark picture houses. Then it was 
the sunlight again with the clouds hung low before their 
eyes. . . Every day they went for luncheon to the 
“Laurel Restaurant.” Sometimes Martin paid the 
waitress, who always regarded them curiously, but more 
often was it Kitty who paid. 

On the days her allowance arrived from England she 
had fits of spending, expensive cigarettes and wine, 
and drives far into the country. She was not very fond 
of drink, but if amused her to observe the effect of it 
upon Martin. . . He always liked to go into St. 
Stephen’s Green and to remain until the sunlit scene 
had preyed sufficiently upon his mood. Then he would 
write scraps of muddy verse and she would praise his 
person and his genius. He thought of himself as rapidly 
qualifying to be a second George Moore. . . He was a 
-modern lover, not in Paris but in Dublin. 


THE PAGAN 


1 19 

Once upon such an occasion she went with him into 
the dark woods, which the Dublin poets love. It was 
a lovely evening, and the sun going down behind the 
mountains made patterns of gold upon the leaves and 
upon the ground. . . Suddenly Kitty stood all whitely 
gleaming against the background of the tall, dark 
trees. 

“Let us be a nymph and a dryad of the woods,” 
she said in her sudden, impulsive way, “and then you 
can write a poem on it like Keats.” 

She made a wreath of laurels for his brow as, in the 
succeeding sadness, he repeated Dowson’s poem “ Non 
sum qualis eram borne sub regno Cynarae” . . She 
called him her poet, her prince, her master, the lord 
of her life. . . Then they began to speak for the first 
time of leaving Dublin together. It would be such a 
“lark,” she said; and her eyes were gleaming as she 
gazed deeply into his eyes. . . 


120 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


II 

A FEW curious little causes had gone to determine 
this decision. Their inward weariness had begun 
to reshape their world. . . They had become well-known 
figures moving together about the streets of Dublin, so 
well-known indeed that a feeling of shame had begun 
to struggle into the breast of Martin. Cattle men up 
from Glannidan for the market would often poke their 
heads out of a thick crowd and stare at them as they 
went past. . . One night, too, in Kingstown, who, 
of all people, had Martin seen but Father Clarke sitting 
in a secluded place and looking out upon the sea. . . 
Kitty wondered what could have been the matter a little 
later so fully did his mind seem occupied by some 
far thought. . . This little shadow of separation by 
something behind their present way of life caused each 
to fully realise one another in this moment. . . 
She was struck curiously by the thought that it was 
their different nationality that had suddenly arisen as 
the barrier between their souls. Few love words fell 
from either of them on this night, but instead they began 
to discuss points in the age-long hatred of Ireland and 
England. . . Then she cried and flew into hysterics. 
In the morning Martin felt acutely miserable. They 
returned to Dublin in the tram and parted without a 
word of tenderness at the corner of Nassau Street. 

When he went to the new lodgings he had taken at 
the behest of Kitty he found a letter from his mother 
awaiting him. He recognized the poor writing on the 
envelope at once. Inside were a few lines which made 


THE PAGAN 


1 2 I 


the strangest attempts to remove themselves from the 
page, a sorry scrawl. The letter told of Jamesey Cassels 
who had married his sister, B rigid. 

“He never stopped drinking in the widow Kelly’s 
since he came to learn about the child. And that was 
not bad enough, but he’s after leaving her and going 
back to Mucklin. The grand meadow field is after 
rotting on the shank and the oats is falling off the head. 
It’s what I write to ask if maybe you could get a holiday 
or something and come home to give us a hand. We 
heard from Father Clarke that you were after 
getting put out of College. He’s a grand man, and 
you should never forget him, the way he sent Peter 
O’Brien to settle you in Dublin and all. Now, Martin, 
it’s what I want to ask you, what d’ye be doing in 
Dublin these times? I do be having the quarest dreams 
about you.” 

What was he doing now? The present way of his 
life was such a dark part of his consciousness that his 
search for a reply resulted merely in a great, dumb 
sadness. . . He spent the day in striving to write 
something, and in the afternoon his new landlady, 
Margaret Murtagh, came into his room. She was a 
woman of the Midlands who had come away from the 
country many many years before to make a fortune for 
herself by keeping a boarding house in Dublin. She had 
made no fortune, but only a bare living, which removed 
her but a little way from poverty. Martin thought of her 
as possessing at one time some desire to raise herself 
above the mean life of the narrow places. Now she 
looked worn and broken, although it might be said that 
she was still a fine figure of a woman. It was a 
hard life, this continual scraping to make ends meet. 


122 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


Boarders frequently left her without paying their bills, 
and there was a man stopping with her just presently, 
a solicitor, whom she had been hoping would marry 
her for the past four or five years, and who had not paid 
her a penny during all that time. 

This was the only joy of her life, this hour of the day 
when she put on a white blouse and her best black 
skirt. She was not yet an old maid although perilously 
near that age when a woman stands in urgent need of 
adornment. Martin was immediately oppressed by a 
smell of scent, so heavily administered that it subdued 
the odour of the greasy plates and the dirt of the kitchen 
which somehow clung about her still. He felt, too, that 
she had come into the room to ask him for his board 
for the past few weeks. Perhaps she had mistaken him 
too for he did not now appear a very reliable boarder, 
coming in at all hours of the morning and sleeping 
through half the day. Here was she before him 
now in this dual realisation of the peasant, strongly 
repulsive compared with the woman he had just 
left and with whom he was so intimately en- 
tangled. . . He caught the ample body of Margaret 
Murtagh in his arms, in no embrace of affection but 
rather in some curious prostitution of himself. But, 
just presently he had no money with which to pay his 
board. . . She breathed against his cheek in quiet sur- 
render, and he could not help thinking of the man she 
expected to marry her. . . 

When he went down into the dining-room, before 
going out to the Tower, she would have a nice 
tea waiting for him. But there was a smear of disgust 
across his thought. . . The dusk was beginning to 
creep into the room. Across the wide roof of old 


THE PAGAN 


123 

Dublin the shadows were stealing, and far away towards 
the Coombe he could hear a barrel-organ playing. 

“ What d’ye be doing now?” 

These words from his mother’s letter were burning into 
his brain. This was what he was doing while there 
was sorrow in his mother’s house and the harvest still 
in the fields. . . There was a sickness of heart upon 
him as he took his tea. Margaret moved about him 
in attendance. . . 

He was blind to the beauty of the evening scenes 
as he went on through the streets. Passing “The Daffo- 
dils” he thought of taking a drink, but his disgust merely 
swelled higher with the thought. The decadents would 
all be in here, the wasters talking of books they had 
never written nor never would write. . . At the stage 
door of the Tower he was oppressed by the thought 
that Ellen O’Connor would be waiting in the wings to 
speak to him with a quiet look of trust in her eyes. . . 
A few minutes later, as he stood before the mirror in 
his dressing-room he was saddened by the thought that he 
was supremely unworthy of her. He was chilled into a 
bronze stillness of despair as he stood there gazing into 
the mirror. . . The other actor in the room was quoting 
passages from The Hound of Heaven to himself. . . 

He started abruptly, and going into the office told 
Mr. Leonard Thompson that he had made up his mind 
to leave the Tower Theatre. Mr. Thompson snorted in 
quiet amazement, and his surprise seemed very calm 
indeed by the side of this great intention of Martin’s 
to change the ignoble way of his life at the bidding of 
his mother and to bend in filial fulfilment to the clay. 
... In the intervals of his part on the stage he told 
Ellen of his sudden resolve to leave Dublin. She agreed 


124 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


with him that it was a poor sort of place for anyone 
to think of spending their lives. If he went to America 
his writings would soon make him rich and famous 
there. . . She hoped he would not forget that she would 
then be fading in that shop in George’s Street where 
she worked during the day. Indeed she wished that 
she could break away from Dublin too. . . So there 
while a play about Robert Emmet and Sara Curran was 
being played upon the stage they listened half-light- 
heartedly to the pitiful story of the love of that dead man 
for that dead woman and fluttered timidly about the 
realisation of their own love. . .For all the pagan sen- 
suality into which his life had drifted he was truly noble 
in his every feeling whenever he spoke with Ellen. It 
seemed to be because of her that he had thought of 
leaving Dublin to save himself. Already his mind had 
turned back to the scenes of his youth as a way of 
escape, but now, through the suggestion of her presence, 
it had leaped far in pursuit of his ambition. . . But 
the immortal longing of the clay still made an immense 
struggle within his breast. . . 

It would mean escape from the dark spell of Kitty 
Haymer too, yet, by what seemed the queerest accident, 
he met her that night in Grafton Street as he walked 
home pensively from the Tower. She had just come 
out of a picture house in which an American film had 
captivated her. 

“I’m going there next. I’m sick of this filthy Dublin 
she said. 

“ Funny, I have just been thinking of going to 
America, too,” said Martin. 

“Oh, then, let’s go together. It’ll be the greatest fun. 
I’ve just got my allowance!” 


THE PAGAN 


1 25 


Her eyes were upon him again even as they had been 
in the deep, dark woods, and he seemed always powerless 
before that rich look. . . Yet it brought him none of 
the soul’s gladness which had so often flowed out to 
him from the eyes of Ellen when they had gone walking 
together like dream figures through the enchanted 
streets. 


126 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


III 



OW their minds were altogether so concentrated 


upon flight that they put on the faces of fugitives. 


Their lives had been suddenly swallowed in a great eager- 
ness to be away from Dublin and from Ireland. When- 
ever they were together now they were fond of taking 
occasional glances at the tickets to America, which he 
carried. Continually she saw him, not the declining 
figure he presently was in Dublin, but dressed up as a 
cinema actor in America with a new velour hat, a cigar, 
and an amount of gallant assurance. 

“You’ll be my Maurice Costello!” she was fond of 
saying. 

It was strange that Kitty should have come to con- 
ceive a genuine affection for him. She now saw him 
as her real husband, in whom she might take pride as 
the citizen of another country. She fancied somehow, 
beyond the torture of her doubts, that a certain validity 
could be given to her connection by a sincere love. . . 
She had thrown away the little book in which she had 
been accustomed to write down her appointments with 
her other lovers. . . Yet was there ifpon Martin, very 
frequently, remembrance of these things. But she had 
shown great kindnesses towards him. It was through 
her that he was now moving towards his ambition 
achieved for love of Ellen O’Connor. It hardly ever 
struck him to think of the traitor he was both in his 
mind and in his life. . . He often wondered why his 
heart should be for ever torn. . . 

Now that he had thought, even momentarily, of 


THE PAGAN 


127 


returning to the clay, it seemed even more strange that 
he had been plucked away from what should have been 
his real life to this queer destiny. . . Lucy Flynn with 
her talk of cattle and the crops was very far from him 
now. . . The girl he had known at Mrs. McQuestion’s 
he had seen late one night, a wan face wrapped up in 
a shawl. . . Ellen he still met, but Kitty Haymer was 
always very near to him; yet out there in America who 
could say what curious happenings might yet evolve! 
He might be rid of her. They might gradually tire 
of one another and agree to separate. Not exactly 
that he desired this for she still possessed a certain curi- 
ous fascination of personality that would make her 
eminently desirable to any man. . . And besides she 
was continually the means of connecting him with a 
grander way of life, which was an agreeable flattery 
of his vanity. 

She had bought a pretty outfit for this expedition 
to America and had compelled him to accept the present 
of a splendid suit as well. In fact between the purchase 
of the tickets and all her allowance was overdrawn for 
several terms to come. But they looked an unusually 
brilliant pair as they stepped aboard at Queenstown, he 
speaking in imitation of her fine English accent. The 
crowd with whom they mingled looked at them admir- 
ingly and thought them a very well-matched pair indeed. 
Yet when he read the coupling of their names together 
on the list of passengers it was with feelings of curious 
abasement rather than of pride. . .But there was 
no chance of anyone seeing them now here travelling 
second class on a swift Atlantic liner, and when they 
sat down to luncheon, to the good food so cleanly served, 
the excellence of his luck began to appear in a very 


128 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


comforting way to Martin. . . Certainly he had pro- 
gressed amazingly since the days when he had followed 
the plough. . . But there was one thing that rankled 
in his mind, his quiet farewell to Ellen O’Connor, the 
secretive, evasive answers he had given to her consider- 
ate questions. . . 

“You’ll remember me, Martin, dear, for always and 
always, for ever and ever.” 

“For always and always, for ever and ever.” 

“And you will make a great name for yourself with 
that fine brain of yours, a name that will ring all over 
the world.” 

“Yes, darling.” 

Remembering this now he hated himself. How on 
earth had he managed to look into her trusting eyes? 
It had been a near thing once or twice to have averted 
a meeting in the company of Kitty. . . He pictured 
Ellen dreaming in the vacant moments of the shop in 
George’s Street, dreaming of him who was now crossing 
over to America with Kitty Haymer. . . But he would 
do great things yet for her sake, yes, he would do great 
things yet for her sake. . . But there was Kitty still so 
fascinating by his side. 

He had written a short note to his mother saying 
simply that he could not go home to Glannidan, that 
he had got a great job in America and was going there. 
He had a half-conscious recollection that this was the 
usual, vague way of setting the wisp of talk alight in 
Glannidan. “A great job in America!” They would 
talk over a rumour of the kind for months all around 
Glannanea. It would flatter his mother’s pride to know 
that her son was on the way to triumph. But they 
would be in a poor way, his sister and herself, with 


THE PAGAN 


129 


no man in the house. Doubtless they would expect 
some help from him, for had not both of them to 
some extent, determined his present way of life? 
Very clearly he remembered another phrase from her 
letter: “And all the money that was spent on you.” 

He did not find the pleasure he had anticipated in the 
voyage. Its monotony increased the weariness which had 
already begun to creep into his soul. They were thrown 
so continually into the company of one another that they 
had already begun to fade in each other’s eyes. . . 
For the first time in his life he knew the real bitterness 
of a woman’s tongue, and once there sprang a cry from 
her which amazed even Martin, who had produced it. 
... It was like the cry he had once heard in the ditch 
near Glannidan, the broken though still rebellious cry 
of a tinker’s woman with her man kicking her. . . He 
felt that fierce love had often been quenched down to 
such an ugly ending. . . 

The bright gaiety of their passion had become dimmed. 
There seemed to be a certain obligation upon him now 
with regard to her and it was a fetter which hurt. 
Continually was he turning from her, when she 
wished him to linger by her side and talk of the wide 
glory of the sea, to his writing-pad and his pipe and 
chair on the deck, where he wanted to go on with his 
writing for love of Ellen. But he could write nothing 
while she was so near him. . . Once when she asked 
him for her sake to think more seriously of a real way 
of life in America he had spoken crossly, and she had 
replied with obscene words which cut two-edged into 
his soul. Because of her, perhaps, and because of the 
deadly influence of the blithering crowd he had met 
in “The Daffodils” the great ambition that had been 


130 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


raised up in him through contact with the noble fact 
of the Tower Theatre, the clean idealism of Sean 
O’Hanlon and the love of Ellen O’Connor had not been 
fulfilled. . He never included himself in any accusa- 
tion of this kind, for even at the most tortured times 
there was always upon him a feeling of wonder as to the 
strangeness of the personality he had taken away from 
the clay. Yet now for all the curious magic of the 
difference he had made in himself, he was aimless, use- 
less to all seeming for the battle of life, a man without 
a single qualification for entry into the tumultuous life 
of America. He was merely possessed of the dream 
of authorship, the dream of a dream. . . Neither Kitty 
nor he were very hopeful or very happy as they sailed 
into New York Harbour. The thought of this land of 
liberty made no new and brave appeal to them who, 
seeking through what they were pleased to call liberty, 
had found only an enduring bondage. 


THE PAGAN 


131 


IV 

T HEY went to a theatrical boarding-house in 45th 
Street; Kitty had had experience of such places 
in her tours of England. Not so Martin, who now saw 
this side of the stage for the first time. The situation 
seemed to decide momentarily the bent of his inclin- 
ations, intentions and possibilities. He thought he had 
said farewell to the stage upon leaving Dublin and 
the Tower, but now the very circumstances of his 
flight had determined his return to it, not the stage, 
however, of art and literature, but that of mud and 
doggerel. Kitty fell easily among these people. Al- 
though the immediate distrust of the Americans to 
her as an Englishwoman remained the strongest feature 
of their association there was something of the real 
and deeper kinship of the stage between them as well. 
Because of that touch of literary perception he had 
acquired in the National Library, in “The Daffodils” 
and in the Tower, he beheld these large Americans 
with almost the clarity of Dickens in Martin Chuzzle- 
wit and The American Notes. He listened, some- 
times unmoved, more often merely irritated, to their 
great bombast as they sat eating their queer food in 
the dining-room where a crowd of them always lingered, 
gobbling and gabbling. . .Now neither Kitty nor he 
kept one another in torment with battling over the age- 
long quarrel between his country and the British Empire. 
They were united in their detestation of America, and 
so some of the old regard for one another had re- 
awakened in them. The first days drifted fruitlessly. 


132 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


The monster that was America loomed ever more hugely 
around them, and their talk at all times was but an echo 
to their fear. 

The pictorial idea, the jolly romantic film play of 
America, had completely disappeared, and their attempt 
to retreat daily from reality was increasingly more 
miserable for further and further were they entering 
into the shame of one another. Their slight resources 
had dwindled to an alarming extent and he had not 
found work. The sense of his failure smote him doubly. 
He had not made a single step along the path of his 
ambition for love of Ellen, nor had he so far made any 
return for all the kind assistance of Kitty. . . It seemed 
sufficient treachery to one and the other to go the round 
of the theatrical agents every morning and to bear the 
perpetual insults of big men with enormous cigars and 
diamond-studded fronts. 

‘‘The Tower Theatre, is it? Some theatre that. We 
don’t want you.” 

Now it was wholly unlike their days in Dublin when 
both she and he had had money and a certain amount 
of leisure to spend it. Now was there something utterly 
different in their relations. Their lives were becoming 
more and more of a burden, each now with a separate 
and complete torture. . . Kitty acutely felt the com- 
pulsion of her life with Martin, who now seemed less 
admirable than the man she had left. She tortured him 
with talking of the mistake she had made in attempting 
to escape from the mess which had been her marriage 
with Edmund Haymer. 

He now spent a great portion of his time in the streets 
fearful of meeting the face of Kitty sitting there in their 
poor room, so much alone with her tongue turning to 


THE PAGAN 


133 


greater and greater bitterness because she had been 
robbed by him of the gay life she loved so well. . . And 
whenever he returned early it was continuously the same 
hopeless tale. . . Sometimes he came in exhausted 
with hunger. He took only his breakfast in the house, 
and she would save him little scraps of bread or meat 
from her dinner which he ate ravenously. . . Then a 
sleepless night to break only into another unhappy 
day. 

His days were queer things as the torture of each 
one became heaped upon the torture of those that went 
before it. He was an aimless wanderer here in the 
great roaring city of New York. His face did not betray 
his nationality, although his heavy coat of Irish 
frieze, the one good article of clothing in his possession, 
hinted that he came from Ireland. The heels of his 
shoes were rapidly disappearing, and there is nothing 
quite so depressing to the wearer as vanished heels. 
They are an epitome of failure. From thinking of work 
as he moved about the streets he had come to think 
more and more frequently of food. He stopped often 
before the window of a “Childs Restaurant.” In the 
days when he had had leisure to express an opinion 
on anything in terms of literature he would have thought 
of the “ Childs Restaurant’ as the most expressive 
institution in America. The men baking the wheat 
cakes upon the hot plate behind the window of polished 
glass, the shining walls, the white-robed attendants, 
the glistening nickel fittings, the shining quickness with 
which the food was served; all appealed to his sense of 
the theatrical and fascinated him. . . Those who have 
never been hungry are quite unable to realise the effect 
that food has upon life. . . If he could go into a “Childs 


134 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


Restaurant” at any time he knew he would emerge as 
with the halo of a metamorphosis. . . 

It was New Year’s Eve and he turned from contem- 
plation of the window of the Restaurant and faced 
towards where the din was already beginning on Broad- 
way. It was like the rumble of distant thunder, but 
it was cheerful thunder. He did not suddenly think 
of the celebration in its symbolic or religious aspect, 
but just like the “Childs Restaurant” as part of the 
howling blatancy of America. How it swelled and rose! 
He had already heard that New York’s ringing out of the 
Old Year was an appalling thing. He passed into the 
thick of it, a lonely wanderer, with a dark cloud around 
him. The very lights of Broadway seemed to evolve 
a golden shrieking against the sky. . . Here was an 
advertisement for the pretence of America which hid 
its baseness and cruelty and hunger. . . He moved 
forward with difficulty. Here and there he got wedged 
in amongst the crowd. He avoided as best he could 
the blasts of the coloured paper bugles, but he was 
already white from the confetti which fell from the 
windows above him as a snow-shower. He was almost 
deafened by the noise of the things which were specially 
manufactured for making this kind of noise. These 
were shockingly effective. How meaninglessly excited 
were the faces of the men; how lost to dignity the faces 
of the women? ... In this moment surely was the 
gallant riding of the uncurbed passion as of a mad 
sweaty rider against a lonely wind-swept hill. It 
became oppressive, saddening. . . He could not 
shoulder his way through it any further. He would 
have to turn into a side street and go a longer way 


THE PAGAN 135 

home. That was all it meant to him, more weariness, 
more torture. 

He thought it was 45th Street into which he had 
turned; but he was so glad to escape that it did not 
matter. He merely felt released, thankful. There was 
a man standing up the street a little way in the shadows 
watching the whole mad pageant go by. . . Martin 
stopped suddenly. He thought he knew the man. 
He spoke to him and the man made reply in an Irish 
accent, which had some of the hardness of the northern 
province. . . Why, it was Arthur Nicholson whom he 
had met just once in “The Daffodils,” and who had 
been introduced to him by Phelim O’Brien as the first 
Orangeman to renounce capitalised faction and turn 
poet. . . They exchanged a few remarks regarding 
the futile idiocy of the celebration they had just been 
witnessing. There was something magnificent and 
mighty in the serene repose of the poet before all that 
howling littleness. When he laughed it was like the 
laughter of a god. . . In a few moments he had ex- 
plained his presence here. He had come to America 
as a member of a theatrical company to produce plays 
which were also literature. He spoke of his mission 
with pride, considering himself the artistic emissary 
of one nation to another. He was most cordial in his 
invitation to enter the company of his fellow-actors. 
Martin went into a shining cafe and sat amongst 
them. . . 

Suddenly here in this saloon in America through power 
of this literary companionship was he back again in 
“The Daffodils,” and through imagination of “The 
Daffodils” back further in the widow Kelly’s pub in 
Glannidan. . . He was listening to talk which told 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


136 

only of his hopelessness slowly erecting about him the 
circle of his doom. . . However the drinks they were 
standing him were bringing back some of the old enthu- 
siasm which was rapidly making a horrible caricature 
of him as he sat there in his present condition. It was 
a grand thing, he imagined, to hear himself talking about 
books and literature while over yonder in 46th Street 
was the woman who had helped him to America. And 
in that dingy shop in George’s Street in Dublin Ellen 
O’Connor was dreaming of the fame that was to come 
to him. . . And in Glannanea his mother, very pro- 
bably, was still anxious to convince the neighbours of 
the great job her son Martin was after getting in 
America. . .Yet there were moments when he almost 
felt great in his spiritual emancipation. He was abso- 
lutely unlike any Irish immigrant who had ever come 
from Erin. He was curiously unstirred by any thought 
of Ireland. That part of his soul was one with those 
parts of him that had died. The essential element of 
his country, that constituent from which the national 
life sprang upward to flower to what perfection it might 
attain — the clay and its breed, he had seen with the 
realistic and not with the romantic eye. No thought of 
poetry or Ellen coloured his mood when he remembered 
the life of Glannidan and Glannanea. 

He was spiritual exile, too, for no stir of comradeship 
or patriotism came to him when he often stood to watch 
an Irish-American procession go by, the men all dressed 
in black and bedecked in green with a great green flag 
at their head. . . Even the frantic cheers and the hat 
waving of those on the side-walk only made him faintly 
smile. . . He was like no Irishman that had ever been, 
and he knew it so he was always very remote from the 


THE PAGAN 


i37 


grand pageant sweeping by. . . As he caught glimpses 
of the dark, purposeful faces of the men he imagined 
them to be thinking of Ireland, and that in their eyes 
as they marched were heroic visions of Wolfe Tone and 
Robert Emmet, Dan O’Connell and Charles Stewart 
Parnell, all curiously though brilliantly commingled. 
... It seemed a shame that he was not one of them. 
. . . And yet a very ancient Irishman who had once 
plucked his sleeve as he stood thus gazing remote and 
lonely had said: 

“Now I want to ask you, young fellow, did you ever 
see anything so gorgeous as them guys and they going 
by, for every mother’s son of them is a fine, smart fellow 
with a great job, a ward heeler, a cop, a saloon keeper, 
a bar-tender, a bum, a bully or a bowsie. Of course 
it’s no right, I suppose, to question the way they get 
their dollars when they’re all so ready to fire the stuff 
at envoys to America whenever they tramp over here 
with the hat held out looking for subscriptions to ‘The 
Cause/ and wouldn’t you know well by the green and 
gold eyes of them that there isn’t one of them guys at 
the present moment but’s ready to frizzle for pure love 
of Ireland.” . . 

Martin knew some comfort in the thought that there 
were many honoured names around him whose secret 
stories would not bear telling at the same firesides by 
which they were almost beatified for sending home the 
money. 


I3» 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


V 

N OW succeeded a curious stopping, as if for a mo- 
ment, of Martin upon the downward path. A 
minor member of the company dropped out, and Nichol- 
son got him the job, which consisted for the most part 
of walker on in the crowd. He was very glad to get it, 
although in comparison it was nothing better than the 
job he had already left at the Tower. But it was better 
than walking the streets, and would mean a surcease 
from torture for the month or so that it lasted. It 
would mean an opportunity of talking again in the old 
way that was sweet to him, the curious, melancholy way 
that had become a part of his life, that condition wherein 
he became magnified and fondly imagined his name upon 
the covers of books. . . 

Kitty was slipping further and further out of his mind. 
He had written to Ellen and back to him had already 
come a letter in reply, full of the most anxious regard. 
Kitty watched him narrowly one morning as he read 
it. . . It was not until then that her hatred for him 
really leaped into flame. Her money was quite gone now 
and this was a condition she had never before known. 
She blamed him for it entirely, although he paid the 
landlady for her food now, but he had to keep a little 
for the entertainment of himself and his friends during 
these frozen nights in New York. 

Often as he sat in the very midst of it he would 
strive to view himself in this hour “after the show.” 
Arthur Nicholson did not accompany him, but 
wandered New York in search of material for an 


THE PAGAN 


139 


epic which he was writing. Consequently Martin’s 
companions were Connor, Harman and McKeon, who, 
although amateurs only a year or so before, were now 
real actors muffled up in great coats and with long 
hair. . . First came a flow of stage talk. Then as this 
customary discussion of the faults of their fellow-players 
began to dwindle their night became suddenly filled by 
some unusual incident or personality passing vaguely for 
a moment into their lives. 

A man was coming towards them down the tesselated 
floor of the saloon. Connor nudged the others, re- 
marking in his best American: “Here’s a guy made 
up as an actor”! He might not be an actor exactly, 
figured Harman, but he resembled an actor in the manner 
in which he behaved. The three actors were watching 
him most carefully. Martin watched their faces as 
they watched the other man. They were psycho- 
metrists in their different ways and this kind of thing 
gave them immense pleasure. The newly-entered one 
had called for a drink, and was now talking theatrically 
with the bar-man. They guessed so much from the loud 
gestures of him and by the way in which he was letting 
the words out of his mouth. The bar-man was listening, 
with that kind of attention in which boredom is evident, 
to a story which had often fallen upon his ears. Sud- 
denly, at a whisper from the other, the man turned 
sharply round. 

“Say, but he’s coming our way!” ejaculated McKeon. 

Connor said nothing as he pulled at his old calabash. 
. . . And down upon them he came like something 
inevitable. It was only a little way up the counter where 
he had been standing, but a great space of time seemed 


140 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


to separate the moment when the resolve had sprung 
into his mind to the moment in which he stood by them. 
There seemed to hang about him such a sense of in- 
decision that one could scarcely think of him as doing 
anything definite at all. Even as he came towards them 
his eyes were wandering and wondering in vacuity. . . 
He was a pale, exhausted man with light hair and an 
undisturbed, impersonal look. The last glass of beer he 
had ordered at the bar he now carried in his hand to 
the table around which the actors sat. The salutation 
was abrupt and decisive: 

“Will you gentlemen allow me to buy a drink for 
you?” 

“Certainly, friend,” said Connor, whose glass was 
empty, and who, being the father of the company, felt 
himself called upon to make this statement. 

Soon the drinks were on the table before them, and it 
was not long until he had added cigars. They knew 
well that they would have to pay the penalty of being 
thus entertained, and show by their behaviour and their 
speech that it was delightful to be an actor. The new- 
comer said that his name was Nolan and that he was 
from Dublin, in Ireland. 

“Nine years ago when I was an actor in the Broadway 
Teeayther.” (For a theatrical enthusiast it was strange 
to hear him pronounce his favourite word with such in- 
correctness.) His tongue, however, seemed to linger 
around the dear sound of the word and his eyes now 
gleamed with a look that was definite. Harman mirth- 
fully kicked McKeon under the table. It was a pretty 
crude story. 

“It may seem funny, gentlemen, but even in the old 
country I was always full of the idea of going on the 


THE PAGAN 


141 

stage, but the father wouldn’t hear of it, so I had to 
come to this country to get my chance. But I used to 
be a great gymnastic performer. I was once offered an 
engagement in Pat Kinsella’s Music-hall in Dublin.” 

He seemed quite unable to distinguish between 
degrees or divisions of the stage. To sing a song in the 
manner of George Lashwood was, he said, one of the 
most striking turns of his great ambition. His talk 
flowed on upon a tide of beer. . . The bar-tenders 
smiled in the polished distance, for it was well known 
that he had been merely employed as a “super” upon 
one occasion at the Broadway Theatre. . . Each con- 
tribution of drink meant another long instalment of his 
story. He was acquainted with obscure facts in the 
careers of great actors, yet was he better acquainted 
with the careers of subsided and lost actors. He 
rapidly recounted queer, disgusting stories of once 
famous mummers who had gone on the rocks, of fallen 
stars who borrowed half-dollars from bar-tenders they 
had known in their hey-days, and of others still further 
fallen who would follow one all round New York for 
a glass of beer. 

He left them to guess how his own real existence 
passed, but his philosophy of life as expressed in his 
reminiscences went to show that his whole conception 
of having a good time was to do with as little sleep as 
possible. Carefully cultivated insomnia and talking of 
the stage seemed to be the two things for which he con- 
tinued to live this life. 

“Was he still connected with the stage?” 

No, he was not. His brother, a man who had no 
education attached to him, good or bad, had put him off 
it by repeated threats. 


142 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


“Now if only I could have afforded the time to wait 
for engagements like other actors, what might I not 
have become? I might be wearing a grand fur coat 
now and listening to people saying as I passed through 
the streets: ‘There’s Ignatius Nolan, the famous Irish 
actor!’ That, gentlemen, was the future I put before 
me nine years ago when I was an actor in the Broadway 
Teeayther.” 

As the evening passed, the others knocked good fun 
out of this poor enthusiast, as well as good entertain- 
ment. But although he was thankful for the beer and 
the cigars Martin did not enter into the joke with the 
same relish. He saw the pity of this fool through the 
fool that was in himself. Here was one with purple 
longings of the same pattern as those which hung around 
his own mind, one who could never have made the actor 
that he fancied himself, just as he, Martin Duignan, 
might never make the writer he dreamt of being, both 
still clinging desperately to the associations of the 
dream. . .Yet, even as he listened to the others chuck- 
ling at the good evening joke that their stray entertainer 
had made of himself, he knew that it was he only who 
had felt and seen the queer reality of Nolan and in 
that seeing eye of his human sympathy there might still 
be hope for him as a writer. 


THE PAGAN 


143 


VI 

W TH the departure of Arthur Nicholson’s Com- 
pany from New York and the consequent con- 
clusion of his engagement, Martin felt that America had 
hopelessly defeated him. He was being removed further 
and further from the stage and literature, in fact from 
life itself, by continuing in a course which questioned 
one of the facts which control life. . . He never passed 
a theatre now, outside one of which the great electric 
signs would be blazing, but he felt himself an essential 
portion of the firmament of which these things were 
the burning glory. During his little engagement, for 
all the association of downfall with which it had been 
attendant, he had struggled up some distance in the 
theatre. He had had a visiting card printed, which 
sometimes got him admission to the theatre on Broad- 
way. . . One night he had gone to see a play in 43rd 
Street, and to Kitty it was an event which momentarily 
ended their torment, and she seemed to struggle back 
again into some of the gaiety which had so long fallen 
from her. He, too, wore his best clothes, but as they 
stood in the vestibule of the theatre they looked like to 
two poor survivals from a brilliant past, two figures, 
as it were, out of a comic paper, as they stood there 
among the brilliant crowd. . . Once in the auditorium 
they chatted gaily enough, and just as soon as the curtain 
rose they began to criticise the acting, for the quality 
of being satirically critical had somehow come to 
Martin in the Tower and Kitty had acquired it long 
since in distant England. . . Momentarily they forgot 


144 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


the kind of life which they were now compelled to live. 
Yet, once back in their dismal room, each felt that their 
little taste of joy had only the effect of making them 
still more angry with one another. Then suddenly 
it seemed that it was the theatre that had ruined both 
of them. In one wide sweep of remorse he saw with 
clear eyes the life from which he had sprung. There 
were young men who had come away from the country 
just like him and they had made a success of their lives, 
at least according to the vulgar estimate of success as 
it obtained in Glannidan. He had seen them coming 
home from this America with their padded shoulders 
and wide pants and high-heeled shoes and little round 
hats, and heard them speak of their greatness over 
yonder. These, he could well feel even now, had been 
moments of triumph for such men, the old men and 
women marvelling the while that bits of their own clay 
could have arisen to such supreme perfection. If he 
could return as them, even now, it would be a solace 
to his mother. There came a curious re-awakening of 
sympathy with her. 

He knew the names of some who had left Glannidan 
and Glannanea, and won to such success that they had 
become saloon-keepers. Next day he went to the great 
Metropolitan Library, and taking down a Directory 
searched for the names of some of those he had known 
and heard of as saloon-keepers. He scribbled the ad- 
dresses on a slip of paper, and that very day went 
out in quest of his fortune. He searched in his pockets 
and discovered that he had 40 cents. He knew that 
a glass of beer must be purchased in every saloon he 
entered, but with these there would be the compen- 
sation of a free snack or a free luncheon and a number 


THE PAGAN 


145 


of such might produce the same effect on a man as a 
decent dinner. Again he had begun to think altogether 
in terms of food. 

He had gone in and out of a great many saloons 
since his coming to America, grand palaces of dazzling 
glass and polished wood where white-robed attendants 
stood attentively behind the bar; queer houses in moan 
streets where women waited round little tables. . . He 
had an idea that the kind of saloons he sought would 
be characterised midway between these two extremes, 
so it was along streets where he might find such places 
that he went. 

“Joe Reilly.” The first name upon the list was 
burning itself into his mind. He remembered Joe as 
a man whom his dead father could not endure. “That 
man is a vulgar clown!” He distinctly remembered 
the phrase in which his father had described Joe Reilly 
to his mother upon a memorable occasion when the 
American had called while on an ostentatious visit 
to Glannidan. 

“Arrah, man, what vulgar is he, and him having 
a great job or something? That’s the lad that got on 
well. Sure, I remember him and me going to school 
together, he used never to have a breeches that you’d 
know the masterpiece on. And look at him now with 
a saloon, they say, of his own!” 

“He’s a dirty, vulgar hound, and I’d think nothing of 
telling him so, and kicking him out of the house. The 
like of them fellows set a bad example when they come 
over here luring young fellows and girls to destruction 
by their big talk and their bragging.” 

“Ah, but sure, sometimes they bring them to more 
good fortune than the ones that stay behind.” 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


146 

He could realise, too, as he remembered it, that his 
mother must have meant this as a cut even as she meant 
all such sayings, for her face wore a vexatious little 
look as she said it and her voice was slightly touched 
with disdain. . . It was the very best way she had 
of sending his father from the house and across the fields 
into Glannidan. . . 

It seemed very strange that he should be thinking 
of this and striving, half consciously, to fit the incident 
into the vague scheme of romance his mind was always 
striving to weave. Yet for all his faults, and they were 
many, the dead man his mother had married always 
seemed far more admirable than this great podgy 
creature he was now searching these streets in the hope 
of meeting, the man who had sat so stolidly before the 
fire in the kitchen smoking a big cigar and spitting into 
the ashes and talking windy talk about America. . . 

He walked into the East Side Cafe which had Joe 
Reilly’s name above the door. It was years since he 
had seen him, then in the flush of his prosperous twenties, 
but immediately he recognised the man with the heavy 
jowl who stood evidently discussing some matter of po- 
litical graft with a knot of men just inside the door. 
The air was thick with blasphemy and smoke. 

“Well, you God-damned son of a bitch!” he said 
just as soon as Martin had announced himself. Then 
he took him into the bar and stood him a glass of beer. 
Thus had Martin been saved disappointment first shot, 
and his 40 cents were so far untouched. Joe Reilly 
was talking rapidly. Hitherto Martin had been in 
contact with the intelligence of America. Now, how- 
ever, he was dealing with the crude material. His 
intellectual superiority was pitifully apparent to him- 


THE PAGAN 


147 


self, yet somehow it was the remembered Yank of his 
boyhood days in Glannanea that was in his mind. . . . 
There was a puzzled light in the eyes of Joe Reilly, too, 
as if his mind was being sped by a similar effort of 
memory. Martin was beginning to experience the old 
cowardly sensation, in fact the most marked feeling 
that a man took away with him from Glannidan and 
Glannanea, a certain shame of his appearance in the 
presence of another who knew something of his family 
history. It seemed scarcely possible that Joe Reilly 
could be pained by the same feelings of abasement. . . 
Yet he was certainly in a state of excitement, 
mouthing out a great volume of irrelevance. But he 
was an Irishman, and it might be that he wished, by 
talking thus, to take his mind away from that fireside 
in Ireland where he had once talked in much the same 
way to help him forget that it was Arthur Duignan 
and not himself who had married the only girl he had 
ever loved. Despite his uncouth exterior there was still 
a rare softness in his heart for that woman, and 
here was her son now seeing him in his natural dirt 
in this place and surrounded by the scum of the East 
Side of New York. . . There were coming curious, 
awkward breaks in the conversation, moments when both 
were plunged in abysmal regrets. . . But these 
passed with little, sad flutters from their minds for each 
was making a courageous effort to act his part before 
the other. . . Joe Reilly was speaking as rapidly as 
his heart permitted him: 

“Say, sure! sure! Get you a jawb, I guess, why 
sure! Why didn’t you call around sooner? Always at 
your service, old son.” 

“I have had some big engagements in the theatrical 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


148 

line, and Fm going in for writing, too — novels and plays. 
I have a few terrific ideas for plays. I expect to make 
a few hundred thousand dollars out of them.” 

“Plays, eh? Why that’s a God-damned big ambition 
of yours. Arthur Duignan’s son from Glannanea writing 
plays for John Drew or Arnold Daly! Plays — for the 
love of Mike!” 

Martin, with the false pride of Ireland, was attempting 
to be big here, just as Joe Reilly had tried to make 
himself big back in Ireland, but each was now becoming 
rapidly naked in the eyes of the other. . . Suddenly 
Joe made an heroic attempt to recover the attitude out 
of which he had been knocked by the talk of this 
youngster from Glannidan. 

“Say, I just recollect, I have influence in the theatrical 
line — vaudeville. I can get you a jawb.” 

Suddenly Martin saw him stride down the bar towards 
a man who, from his appearance might be a scene-lifter 
at a ten cent picture house with Vaudeville turns. 

“Tell the kid to call around on Monday,” he heard 
the man shouting. 

Joe came back, gave him the address of the picture- 
house and told him to call around there on Monday. 
Then he stood him a few more drinks, gave him a handful 
of cigars, and just as he was about to leave slipped a 
five-dollar bill into his hand. 

“Now, son, if you’re writing home to your mother, 
or to anyone in Glannidan, you’ll say that you met Joe 
Reilly in New York and that he’s some big pot out there, 
got you a jawb, and all that sort of thing.” 

That night he spent the five dollars on Kitty, and she 
tried to be kinder to him than she had been for many 
a day. Yet her chatter only sounded distantly to his 


THE PAGAN 


149 


ears. . . One moment he blamed himself for accepting 
a mean job from the like of Joe Reilly, because it seemed 
such a definite attack upon his great ambition, and the 
next he blamed himself for not having looked for such 
a position sooner. . . But the struggle between hunger 
and imagination had already been decided within 
him. 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


ISO 


VII 

H E felt, somehow, that he must remove from his 
present environment, because it was odorous of 
the theatre and continuously within it did he breathe 
the poison of his dream. He had fallen into acquaint- 
ance with a few of the boarders in this house in 45th 
Street, and he had often stopped to chat with them for 
a moment in the hallway, or go at their invitation for 
a drink to the saloon across the street. Their talk and 
the general atmosphere was but a poor imitation of 
the fine literary scenes which had been created in the 
company of Arthur Nicholson’s players. He did not 
care to spend so much time with Kitty in their room 
now. She was always sewing, or else doing some work 
of that kind, continually musing over a writing-pad as if 
striving to make up her mind to write to someone. 
. . . Yet still that curious affectionate sympathy which 
comes to two who suffer together had fallen upon them 
and they seemed to know a certain happiness. She 
had grown so quiet, too. In Dublin it had been im- 
possible to please her whims, but now she seemed very 
grateful for the smallest kindness. She grew more 
and more remote from the grimy scene which had 
enveloped her, and it often appeared as she sang a 
snatch of an old song that she was back again in that 
quiet parsonage in England, and that all the shame had 
fallen away from her. . . Often as he listened, Martin’s 
mind would turn back to Glannidan in an attempt 
to catch the beauty of his young years. In an occasional 
moment of mad fancy he thought of going back there 


THE PAGAN 


151 

with her when he had won through his present diffi- 
culties, which he was going to face like a man, in the 
job that Joe Reilly had got for him, on the following 
Monday. 

“Martin Duignan, be the holy farmer! Did you 
hear what Martin Duignan done over in the States; 
married a Protestant, begad, a minister’s daughter, 
no less?” 

The enormous offence it might seem to the good 
people of Glannidan and Glannanea was at once suffi- 
cient to prevent him seeing himself married, or letting 
on to be married, and bringing her into the house 
where his mother and sister lived with his sister’s 
child. . . Yet in the face of all this dark impossibility 
he grew strangely kinder and more kind to Kitty. 
... On Monday he was beginning. . . But it seemed 
too late now, for frequently she turned away from him 
and went on with her attempt to write upon the pad. 
. . . Once he saw it where she had thrown it down 
upon rushing with unaccountable suddenness from 
his presence. It contained a columnar list of dates 
beginning some weeks back and continuing down 
to the date upon which he knew her allowance would 
next come due. The days that had already passed 
were neatly ticked off. Then, inside, and still untorn 
from the pad, was a letter phrased in the form of a 
confession and containing a full record of the way of 
her life since she had left her husband. . . It seemed 
hard to think that any man could have her back now; 
she must eventually drift and drift until the streets had 
claimed her. Yet through her great sorrow might come 
a great forgiveness. . . He saw, for the first time, 
in this note, too, how she had loved him, and yet did 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


152 

he feel a powerful disgust for her immediately. . . 
Next day with their poor belongings they took a street 
car, and getting off near Central Park took up lodging 
in a miniature room in a Harlem flat. . . It would be 
nearer his work, Martin thought, and away from the 
cursed atmosphere which had only dragged him down 
and down. . . 

On the Monday when he went to his work it was with 
no great enthusiasm. All the way across to the east 
side street, where the Vaudeville house was, he could 
not help thinking that he had once gone into saloons 
with his big frieze coat, which was the very nearest 
approach to a fur coat, and drank and smoked cigars 
with the best of them “after the show.” Now he was 
about to become worse, or at least lower in his own 
estimation and in the social scale, than those stage la- 
bourers he had seen in the theatre where he had played 
small parts with Arthur Nicholson’s Company. . . 
An old, queer dread came to him. . . Would anyone 
who had known him in Glannidan or in Dublin see him 
now? . . . 

At last he stood at the stage door of the “Champion” 
Vaudeville. When he went in the man who was sweep- 
ing the stage thought, through a cloud of dust, that he 
was a “star,” who had strayed into the wrong theatre. 
The brush dropped out of his hand when he explained 
that he was the man who had been recommended for 
the job by Joe Reilly. . . The man, however, immedi- 
ately recovered his assurance and his nationality and 
ordered Martin to pick up the brush and to go on with 
his sweeping of the stage! . . . 

It was here and now that he thought of Ellen O’Connor, 
thought of her, too, with a great rush of regard that 


THE PAGAN 


153 


would not be suddenly darkened by the murkiness of 
this place. He had written to her only once since his 
coming to America, just after he had got the short en- 
gagement with Arthur Nicholson’s company. She had 
sent him what he considered a beautiful reply, and 
out of it he had imagined a short study. He fancied 
that she had come out to America and entered into the 
rough, crude life there. He pictured her lover, himself, 
for the moment unable to rise himself, meeting her in 
this setting. Their confusion for the moment, and then 
the sudden and penultimate unveiling of their souls. . . 
He sent it to one of the New York evening papers, and 
for a week or so bought the paper every evening in the 
hope of seeing his name in print at the bottom of a piece 
of writing about Ellen. But it had not appeared, and he 
had almost forgotten it until now. 

This was another definite circle of his hell. It was 
one of those small American Vaudeville houses whose 
performance continues for ever. . . It began at eleven 
in the morning and continued till eleven at night. 
The material for vulgar laughter had to be manufac- 
tured at a fearful rate to supply value for the money 
of the crowds which poured into the place continuously. 
There were ten “turns,” each of which came on 
fourteen times a day. These turns were alternated 
by pictures. 

It was Martin’s work to set the stage for the turns, 
some of which carried a great number of properties 
as well as some heavy scenery. It was like the work 
of sailors. The man who helped him had been a sailor 
and called the place a “ship.” The sweat dripped 
from them in the close atmosphere. Continually the 
sound of the stage-manager shouting harsh commands 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


1 54 

was about them, while around them stood or waited 
the painted men and women in flashy clothes 
awaiting their turns. . . Sometimes a comedienne 
would gaze at him from out the dressing-rooms beneath 
the stage with wide pencilled eyes. But he had no 
leisure in which to fully realise the degradation into 
which he had fallen. Then something happened which 
recalled him to realisation of his personality. In the 
second half of the week there was a certain “show” 
which required the assistance of two “supers” and the 
other man and he were employed at the rate of four 
dollars for the half week to become part of the turn. . . 
Their make-up consisted of something like a compromise 
between the nakedness of a South Sea Islander and the 
clownishness of a Stage Irishman. The sailor did not 
seem to feel it and the extra four dollars came in useful, 
but to Martin it was the infinite torture. To be com- 
pelled to do it fourteen times a day. . . At the end of 
the first day he was like a man gasping for air. He 
hurried on his great coat. He would drink this night, 
drink surely as he had never drunk before. He rushed 
into the first saloon and bought pint after pint of beer. 
. . . Then even through this queer method of recovery 
he began to feel some of the manhood returning. But 
there was torture raging like a burning forest through 
his mind. . . He picked up a paper and there was the 
short study, The End of the Dream , which his thought 
of Ellen had led him to write. . . His eyes became 
suddenly luminous as he read. This little thing was 
like manna falling on his mind. . . He read and re- 
read it as he stood there with his glass of beer before 
him. . . Here was something that plucked him 
from his hell and it was through Ellen it was happening. 


THE PAGAN 


155 

... He could go home to Kitty in a great ecstasy 
to-night, but he could not tell her of Ellen. . . These 
were the two flames of his life which must remain for 
ever hidden from one another by the cloudy barrier, which 
was himself. . . 

Yet, presently his mood took a turn which produced 
a different result. He got quite drunk, more soddenly 
drunk than he had ever before been. He was scarcely 
able to reach home. He slept on the floor, and early 
in the morning Kitty awoke him and looked down pity- 
ingly into his face. He did not go to work that day. 
About noon he called at the ticket office of the “Cham- 
pion” Vaudeville and collected what money was due to 
him. After spending a short while in a saloon he went 
on to the Metropolitan Library and remained there writ- 
ing until far on in the evening. 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


156 


VIII 

N OW came the complete collapse of Martin. With 
the few dollars he had earned at the “Champion” 
Vaudeville he did not pay the debts already contracting 
rapidly with his new landlady, but bought instead a 
fountain pen and a number of writing pads, which he 
made admirable attempts to blacken in the Metropolitan 
Library. He bought all the evening papers and searched 
them through, but never another sketch of his made an 
appearance. The torment of the damned litterateur be- 
came his portion. . . 

Then a startling thing happened. He saw the pre- 
liminary notice of a forthcoming play, and the news 
almost blinded him as he read it, for it was one of his 
own ideas put into the form of a play by a clever man 
who turned out melodramas. This must be one of the 
ideas he had spoken of to Joe Reilly. But he could 
scarcely remember, so thick was the haze about his 
mind, whether or not he had submitted it in scenario 
form to some of the theatrical managers. Perhaps it 
was that he had merely thought or dreamt of it simul- 
taneously with this man who had written it. Good 
Lord! Why had not he written it first? This fellow 
who turned out melodramas by the yard would make 
a pot of money out of it. . . In that event, if he had 
only been so lucky, he saw himself acting the man by 
Kitty. He saw his dream being realised for love of 
Ellen; he saw himself in splendour before the people 
of Glannidan. A terrible sense of loss by turns over- 
came him and urged him. It worked on his brain. 


THE PAGAN 


157 


He wrote to the author and the manager, and even 
attempted to get his case taken up by the papers, but 
without success. He met Ignatius Nolan again, and, 
having told him the story, the two would spend the 
greater part of the day in saloons cursing the luck that 
had prevented one of them from being an actor and the 
other from winning fame as a playwright. It was the 
theatre that had broken both of them, yet they could 
never stop talking about it. Nolan brought him over 
half the city, introducing him to bar-tenders and to 
subsided and lost actors. He became known in the 
circle of Nolan’s queer friends as Mr. Martin Duignan, 
the lost playwright. Those, even most distantly connec- 
ted with the theatre, evidently did not believe him, and 
he did not believe the lofty stories they told of their some- 
time glory. . . This was the continual scene which 
Ignatius Nolan created for their individual torture round 
him and them, but because of his immense enthu- 
siasm for the stage and because he really knew 
nothing of its inner meaning he believed both in Martin 
and in the others. 

“Now you just watch me! I’ll show New York City 
and the whole United States of America who’s the real 
author of The Sybil and the Sphinx when it comes to 
be produced. You just wait! I’ll get it over on that 
cheap guy who sneaked your play.” 

Martin used to smile wearily at this repeated affir- 
mation of Nolan’s trust in him and wonder vaguely 
what this poor semi-illiterate hanger-on of the stage 
could do before the might of the lurid press, the arro- 
gance of theatrical managers and the pride of successful 
authorship. But Martin became mildly excited in the 
knowledge that he would certainly do something. . . 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


158 

So on the night before the production of the play in 
New York he was not surprised to see Nolan come into 
their favourite saloon with a roll of slips in his hand 
and the pockets of his overcoat bulged with a paste- 
pot on one side and a brush, with a long collapsible 
handle in the other. These were the accessories of the 
thing he was going to do. 

They went out and pasted the slips, which caused 
the announcement to read, “The Sybil and the Sphinx 
by Martin Duignan,” over as many posters as they 
could see, without unduly attracting the attention of 
policemen or passers by. . . Then they went into saloon 
after saloon as long as Ignatius Nolan’s money lasted, 
and emerged to parade past the altered posters feeling 
like two lords, the real author of the successful new play 
and his friend moving distantly as fame would permit 
them among the throng. 

He was still babbling drunken nonsense about his 
greatness when he went into the little room where he 
lived with Kitty. Although it was very late she was 
standing before the looking-glass gazing deep as it were 
into the hell of punishment which was mirrored in her 
eyes. There were lines of weariness about her mouth 
and her complexion was beginning to lose the last trace 
of its bloom. 

“Oh, dear, dear,” she sighed for the thousandth time. 
“I’m growing old, I’m fading away.” 

“Old,” he laughed, his mind suddenly falling down to 
realisation of his body’s condition; “old, what has that 
got to do with it; which is worse, age or hunger?” 

She did not heed him, but went on lamenting. 

“Oh, if Edmund saw me now, why he’d scarcely know 
his bride.” 


THE PAGAN 


159 


“Edmund and his bride,” he sneered, coarsely. “I 
wish to the Lord God I had left you, my precious darling, 
with your loving Edmund.” 

There was something exceedingly brutal, something 
of supreme disregard in his words. The whole, tremen- 
dous adventure of their elopement had suddenly 
narrowed down to a question of her desire for beauty 
and adornment as opposed to his hunger, a mere matter 
of selfishness, a triumph for the elemental desire in 
both of them. . . 

She had not been supremely disgusted with him until 
this moment, for in his efforts to provide for her, queer 
and poor though they were, he showed that he was not 
altogether without appreciation of all she had done for 
him, her brave struggle with the trustees of her little 
property to get what paid for their tickets to America, 
the fact that she had given him the few dollars she was 
possessed of on landing and, later, pawned her dead 
mother’s very beautiful ring to save him from 
hunger . . . full of remembrance of all these things 
and with her beauty robbed from her, she spoke 
angrily to him now. She had remembered the days be- 
fore they had planned this trip to America, and with 
this recollection the pictorial idea of America had re- 
turned, and she spoke with wild bitterness. 

“Kitty,” he pleaded, suddenly chilled by her anger 
into realisation, “I’m hungry, leave me be.” 

“No, you’re not hungry, you’re only drunk, you big, 
filthy beast, and isn’t it a fine thing when a great, big 
strong fellow like you can’t make enough money to buy 
anything for his wife.” 

“You’re not my wife.” 

There was no sound of pity in his flat, dull voice, 


160 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

nothing save an immense power to wound her. She 
turned on him with her fierce dark eyes, and there in 
that little room she tortured and tortured him until 
his soul writhed in extremest agony. She had given 
him everything, all that a woman can give a man, 
and what return had he made her, nothing save age 
and loneliness and the immense beastliness of this little 
room. 

And now the little love that had managed to linger 
on ended here, and the succeeding days were unwarmed 
by any ray of affection. As he slunk home of an evening, 
after an empty day, he knew very well that the sad, 
tired face would be looking out for him with a 
look of sullen anger in her dark eyes. . . It came at 
last one evening after he had stumbled home, even thus, 
half silly with hunger and disappointment. She said 
she was leaving him; she was returning to Edmund 
Haymer, if he would have her back again. 

“That is, if he will have me back now that I have been 
ruined by you,” she said, imparting an unnecessary bit- 
terness to the simple statement of intention. 

“You are quite sure he does not know about me, I 
mean,” asked Martin, still not without some concern for 
her happiness. 

“No, my plans were brilliant, because I loved you, 
I suppose, for all it has brought me to this. He wrote 
to me the other day, and it seems that the story of my 
theatrical engagement and my stay with friends has 
never since been doubted by him. You have never 
once entered into his calculations. At any rate he 
seemed just glad to get rid of me. You know by a 
lucky chance I said four months, although I surely 
thought then that I could stay with you for ever. 


THE PAGAN 161 

Doubtless he has already begun to pick himself up in 
anticipation of my return, the beast.” 

Henceforth they were to one another as strangers from 
far countries. . . As the weary weeks, until the day 
she had named for her going, passed slowly he began 
to care less and less for her company and he would often 
come home very late after having spent the night in 
vainly trying to bury his mood in some of the low saloons 
of Fourth Avenue. . . She would often wake up sud- 
denly as he came in, and say: 

“Is that Edmund?” But he would answer gruffly, 
drunkenly: “No, it is I, Martin!” as if angry to the last 
that some spark of kind concern for his existence did not 
remain with her. She saw that he was daily falling 
deeper and deeper into the slough. She seemed very 
glad of his misery, and often laughed loudly on Sun- 
days when she saw him trying to suck some joy out of a 
Sabbath newspaper. . . 

But the day of her departure from America and the 
ending of it drew swiftly nearer. He was continuously 
reminded of it by the time-table she kept by her bedside 
with the number of days decreasing daily between 
America and “her dearest Edmund.” The irony of the 
term of endearment! How many thousand times had she 
told Martin how she loathed the man? It was her stories 
of the brute’s cruelty that had helped to finally en- 
tangle him with this wife of another. . . He fell to 
wondering what kind of parting they would make of it 
between them. 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


162 


IX 


HE little sum which was to take her back to 



England had at last come, and with it the eve 


of their parting. She was full of eagerness to get away 
from the little room which beheld the obscenity of their 
quarrels and recriminations. . . He carefully packed her 
few faded belongings in their old theatrical basket and 
got an express man to take it down to the docks for 
fifty cents. She paid the landlady, and they went out 
together to buy the ticket back to England. It was not 
the intention of either of them to return ever again to the 
little room. He suggested that it would be more con- 
venient to stop at a small hotel in 45th Street. 

There was good heat in the room that was given them 
and it filled them with a sense of comfort and decency; 
as he looked around, after vainly striving to realise his 
present position, the quiet pattern of the wall-paper 
led his mind into the way of flat, oppressive thought. . . 
There rushed across his mind the whole story of his years, 
so bent and warped by his connection with this 
woman. But it was their last night together and he 
had resolved to be truly magnanimous. He could 
not keep himself from regarding her half tenderly. She 
made the best possible attempt to adorn herself, and 
there was about her the rare brightness of other lovely 
nights and other lovely days. 

As she looked into his face she seemed of a sudden 
to grow weary of the hatred she had worked up against 
him. It had been his misfortune to meet with her, and 
but for the pity of their meeting he might still be 


THE PAGAN 


163 

the romantic figure she had known. She kissed him, 
saying she was sorry, awfully sorry. Would he be so 
very kind as to forgive her? They grew suddenly so 
compassionate of one another. She came and sat upon 
the arm of his chair and ran her thin, delicate fingers 
through his hair. She bent low again to kiss him and 
he saw very clearly the little lines which had begun to 
deepen around her eyes. It was he who had done that 
furrowing for he had considered her of unblemished 
beauty on the first night they had met in Dublin. 

She was going from him now because he had made 
that beauty fade; she was returning to the other brute 
from whom he thought he had so gallantly helped her 
to escape. . . Their sorrow became rapidly apparent to 
one another. She turned away to gaze, half vacantly, 
upon the meagre comfort of the little room and to think 
upon the coldness of the sea. . . 

“I think I’ll stay,” she said. 

Her words smote his ears with a sense of shock. He 
had been somehow glad since the day she had made 
up her mind to leave America, glad for her sake, glad 
for his own. She might regain a little happiness back 
in England, and he might be better when he was away 
from her. But this return to her old desire of him after 
he had tried to quench the last spark of affection for 
her was something he could not understand. He did not 
reply. 

“You wish me to go back to Edmund, and I want 
so badly to remain here with you. Is there no more hope 
of that now?” 

“None,” he said, and his tones were final in their ring; 
“where would be the sense in living it all over again. 
It has been pretty beastly, you know.” 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


164 

“It has been awful, dearest Martin, but now the 
thought has come to me that I am not quite strong 
enough for the journey. I have ever had a strange, 
lonely horror of the sea.” 

“But, what about the second-cabin passage you have 
just purchased? It would be a lot of money to waste. 
Have you thought of that?” 

“I have,” she said, disappointed cruelly by his ques- 
tion. “But what is such a little consideration at all if 
only we could love in the fine, fierce way of old.” 

“It is just the means that make such considerations 
that might have helped us to retain that love.” 

There was such a queer turn of bitterness in his every 
word. She was crying, and clutching his cheek with her 
hand. 

“I’m afraid,” she sobbed. “Oh! I’m awfully afraid of the 
seaandof what is beyond the sea. Oh, Martin, I am really.” 

“You’re not ill?” 

“No, but I’m dreadfully afraid that I am going to 
be ill. I have the strangest fancies about myself. A 
month ago I should have seen a doctor.” 

“You can see the ship’s doctor to-morrow.” 

Why was he still so hopelessly cruel? But in spite 
of it all she talked on to him, trying hard to fan the old 
love into some kind of little flickering flame, while he 
endeavoured to quench it with his every word. Suddenly 
she almost screamed with the painful suggestion of a 
sudden thought. 

“What if I were going to Oh, you know, Martin, 

what should I do then?” 

He laughed loud and long. 

“Ridiculous!” he at last managed to jerk out. . . . 

But there was a light upon her face now and she 


THE PAGAN 


165 

seemed of a sudden to be of great power and signifi- 
cance in his life. He began to grow afraid of the bond 
that still seemed to tie them even in their last moments 
together. What if it had grown to such strength as 
she had just suggested? The blasting punishment of it 
would be certain to envelop his whole life. . . 

All through the night as she remained very near him 
for the last time, she implored him to allow her 
to remain. But he merely laughed and tried to put the 
idea away from her. She cried out in her dread 
that something beyond the world was telling her to re- 
main, but he would sigh away with horrible insistence 
that it was better for them to part. . . She whispered, 
pleadingly, how this feeling of impending illness had 
been growing upon her for some time and how strange 
things had happened to her physically. . . She could 
not imagine what they meant, unless . . . unless. . . 
Then she attempted to create for his torture again all 
the torturing thoughts that had come to him on all the 
nights he had stayed away from her, swilling in the 
saloons of Fourth Avenue. He told her, not without a 
certain tearfulness in his tones, that the bare idea of her 
sufferings had never entered his mind. 

“And it always seemed a kind of funny that you were 
never able to pay a doctor to tell me what was wrong. I 
used to be thinking over that all the time you were away . . .” 

At length, worn out by their torment of one another, 
they dropped into a fitful slumber. They would start 
up quite suddenly every hour or so to have a look at 
one another and to behold the fearful reflections of the 
sin which still bound them. He rose at six and made 
what preparations were necessary for departure. She 
awakened painfully, and looked at him with disappoint- 


i66 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


ment in her eyes. . . How dreadfully anxious he 
appeared for her departure? She did not feel any desire 
to go at all, but he was soon by her side telling her the 
time. She glanced lovingly towards him in a final, 
stricken appeal, but he did not seem to notice or to 
understand. Then she rose, an infinite weariness 
hanging on her every movement, and put on her faded 
fineries. He thought she looked quite ill in the morning 
light. They were soon ready. He took up the two 
tattered suit-cases which held her poor belongings, 
even to the photograph of Edmund Haymer, and hurried 
downstairs. A man they met in the hall viewed them 
askance, but they reached the street in safety and turned 
into Eighth Avenue. 

“About breakfast?” he said. 

His possessions in money amounted to about a dollar. 
It was his intention to buy a decent breakfast for her 
before they went down to the steamer. So far he had 
not begun to wonder where the money was going to 
come from when she had returned to England. He had 
none with which to seek new lodgings; he had no pros- 
pect of employment and he had no allowance. They 
walked into a quick-lunch restaurant and he ordered a 
substantial breakfast. Whatever might be the cause, 
whether it was the rare spectacle of Martin buying good 
food for himself and her, or else the feeling of nausea 
surviving from his abominable callousness of the night 
before, she did not rightly know what made her eat 
scarcely any of the fine and unusual meal. She observed 
with infinite disgust how comfortably and how greedily 
he devoured his plateful. 

“Do you mind?” he said, putting over his knife and 
fork and taking what remained of her portion. 


THE PAGAN 


167 


“Dirty beggar!” she said. 

“It may seem a disgusting thing to do, but I have 
really no notion where the next meal is coming from.” 

He said this with a complete absence of emotion, his 
eyes fixed upon the bit of meat before him. 

Soon they were in a street car on their way to the 
steamer. . . He assisted her across the gangway and 
down below. She looked weak, and said that she felt 
very cold. He arranged her few things just before the 
stewardess came in to answer a lot of questions. . . 
It might be some time before they could start as the 
fog in the river was dense and dangerous. . . Yes it 
would be possible to see the ship’s doctor presently. 
. . . When she heard this she clung to Martin and 
asked him to wait and hear what was the medical opinion 
of her condition. . . Reluctantly he gave his word that 
he would, but just then the order was given for all visitors 
to go ashore. . . 

He remained for a long time looking fixedly at the 
spot on the deck where he had left her. Before his 
vacant eyes lay a muddy ooze of musing. . . After 
what seemed an interminable time the ship began to 
move away. Then, through the thick veil of sorrowful 
stupidity which overhung the bitterness of his mind he 
saw her appear, her hands outstretched to him, almost 
theatrically, in a last wild appeal. . . She had seen the 
doctor. Then it was true. . . When the startled, be- 
seeching look in her eyes met the look in his, which was 
lifeless, pitiless, she fainted and was carried below by 
two women and a steward. . . He turned up his coat 
collar and was soon lost among the drab crowd in Four- 
teenth Street. . . 

As soon as his mind returned to realisation he felt 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


1 68 

that he had reached the end of a definite episode in 
his life. It would seem to have taken all this muddy 
and mean adventure to fully express and then to end 
some dark streak of the personality he had taken from 
the clay. It might be that the giant hand of Fate had 
merely projected this woman into his life so that he 
might shed the brute in himself away. . . But he had 
almost exceeded the realistic possibilities of himself; he 
had made himself a character, as it were, out of some 
beastly Russian novel. He had made himself supremely 
unworthy of all the beauty which Dublin and the Tower, 
with the affection almost of another mother, had sought 
to crowd into his life. He felt as if the love of 
the Earth mother and the Art mother for him 
had torn his life between them. But he knew of 
a certainty beyond all doubts and fears that the 
pagan in him had already begun to dwindle down to 
ashes, for now all the darkened places of his memory 
had become suddenly illuminated. He was thinking of 
the night that his fateful resolve had come to him be- 
fore the mirror in the Tower and of how the great lines 
of Francis Thompson had been sounding with such sweet 
music in his ears at the very same moment: 

I fled Him down the nights and down the days; 

I fled Him down the arches of the years ; 

I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways, 

Of my own mind and in the midst of tears 

I hid from Him. . . 

And was he hiding still, and was he still pursued? He 
felt that his face must wear the look of a fugitive again 
as he hurried on to be lost in the throngs. Arid he knew 
not through what vicissitudes of the soul he might still 
have to pass. . . 


THE PAGAN 


169 


X 

H E fell lower now. Ignatius Nolan used to bring 
him scraps from his dinner in his pocket and give 
them to him late at night as they would be drinking in 
some of the saloons of Fourth Avenue. . . There was 
upon him a kind of wretched recklessness. Often when 
Ignatius had failed to bring anything in his pocket, and 
as he crossed to the free-lunch counter of the 
saloon there he would take a glance into the long mirrors 
inset in the walls to observe the change that had so 
rapidly come upon his very soul. It seemed that he 
still looked handsome in the eyes of others, for people 
passing up or down the floor of the saloon would often 
stop and gaze as if arrested by his striking appearance; 
even Kitty, on the night before they parted had praised 
his good looks, but this was not the Martin Duignan 
that he saw as he crossed over to the free-lunch counter 
to take scraps of broken food from it. He saw himself 
marked as it were by the sinful mess he had made of 
his life. He thought of Wilde, and The Picture of 
Dorian Grey , and laughed to himself as the fancy 
struck him again and again. . . Then back again to 
the company of damnable fools which his curious 
association with Ignatius Nolan had helped to gather 
around him. 

“Nine years ago, when I was an actor at the Broad- 
way Teeayther.” 

“Martin, here, is the real author of the play that’s 
making the big success at the New Republic 
Teeayther.” 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


170 

“Yeah!” 

“Yeah!” 

Then a flow of putrid stage talk, so long as the beer 
kept flowing. Later the roaring streets, the cold and 
the “Millington Hotel.” In some cities of America 
they build their doss-houses upon a huge scale, and fit 
them up with all modern equipments, but still they 
are merely doss-houses for the accommodation of the 
creatures that once were men. As he went in and out 
of this place it appeared to Martin that he possessed 
very little life within himself, that he was merely a 
creature of impulse, moving blindly. . . Often he would 
go into the writing room and taking over to his hand 
some of the sheets of free notepaper he would begin 
to set down some of the thoughts of his autobiography. 
Always, however, they were coloured, and finally dark- 
ened by thoughts of Kitty and of the long night which 
had fallen upon his life. . . But he forgave her even 
though he could feel the chains she had forged for him 
still about his mind. It seemed so recently that he had 
known her in the springtime of his ambitions. 
She had drawn him nearer to his vision of pagan beauty. 
. . . That was when his mother had written asking 
what he was doing then. . . He remembered all that 
so clearly in the light of the second letter which had 
come from his mother. . . The thirty-first cousin of 
someone from Glannidan had run away with the 
daughter of Lowry Pigeon, the tailor, and both were 
doing well in New York. “Doing great” was the 
phrase which Martin half-humorously remembered 
Lowry had used to describe Jane and her man. . . 
Well, she had seen whom she took to be Martin upon 
the stage of a grand theatre, and she had written home 


THE PAGAN 


171 

about it to Lowry. . . Lowry had evidently received 
the news with pleasure. It gave him scope to cut the 
ground from under some of Mary Duignan’s bragging. 
. . . Play-acting, that was not much of a life, and his 
mother always prating about him at the egg carts on 
a Friday as she sold her eggs. There she would be, 
a big hat upon her and a rusty shawl, telling them 
breathlessly, of the great job that Martin had just got 
in America while at the very same moment her heart 
was sick and sore with worrying for the future of the 
little homestead in Glannanea. . . But she would seem 
to flatter her mind into forgetfulness as she talked agi- 
tatedly to Glennon the eggman, and the other women 
crowded around the carts. . . Then the talk of Lowry 
Pigeon gabbling to the crowd who filled his shop in the 
evenings had broken in upon her dream. . . 

And so because of that the mother had cried out to 
the son across the world: “Play-acting again, is that what 
you’re at, Martin? Now, sure, that will ruin you. I’m 
near sure that’s what ruined you in Dublin, so it was. 
I’m never done dreaming about you, and even though 
you refused me the last time, I’m going to ask you to 
come home again, son. We’re hard set here for a bit 
of help. Sure you may depend on me to say that 
it’s for the good of your health and everything that you’re 
after coming home. For all he’s such a grand man, God 
bless him! I knew Father Clarke was making a mis- 
take and he sending you off to be a scholar, you that had 
the breed of the farmer in you although your father was 
terrible fond of books.” 

Translated thus from the queer, illiterate scrawl that 
they were he read many times the sentences which 
constituted this letter from his mother as he sat there 


172 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

in the writing-room of the Millington Hotel in New York 
City. . . The clerk at the desk was turning his cigar 
with his tongue and calling to him. . . 

His presence was required at the desk for a moment; 
another letter had just come re-addressed to him from 
Ignatius Nolan’s address which he had sent to his mother 
and given to Kitty. It was from Kitty, and the eyes 
leaped wildly in his head as he read: 

“. . .1 have been to see another doctor, too, in 
Liverpool, and there’s no doubt about it, Martin. . . 
Edmund will never have me back now. . . But it’s 
lovely, all the same, to think that it is for you, and you’ll 
come to me, won’t you, darling? I am staying at the 
Y.W.C.A. in Liverpool, but yesterday they gave me no- 
tice to leave. I don’t know why, excepting, I suppose, 
that the signs are beginning to be heavy upon me. . . 
Oh! darling, please come. If you have no money you’ll 
work your passage, now, won’t you? Anything, only 
come to be with me then. They’ll know of my 
whereabouts here when you arrive. Oh! come, dearest 
Martin, come!” 

He rose as one stunned into a condition of almost 
lifelessness and went out into the streets of New York. 
Gone now was his hope of life and beauty for ever. . . 
How were these two letters now calling him away from 
America. . . Was it to be back to the clean freshness 
of the fields or back to Kitty? Here were the voices 
of the two women calling to him across the void of his 
sorrow and for such different reasons but with the same 
elemental fact trembling at the root of both their 
loves. . . 

He slipped past a few theatres which in their darkened 
state of the daytime had some of the dead daylight 


THE PAGAN 


173 

look of prostitutes. Yet it was in one of these very 
places that ‘the play he thought had been stolen from 
him was making thousands of dollars nightly while he 
had poor clothes on him and the small ways of life 
were still calling, calling. His head was bowed low 
upon his chest when someone good-naturedly slapped 
him on the back. It was Arthur Nicholson. Although 
a poet he looked prosperous in his big fur coat. He 
walked upright like a man in curious contrast to the 
shrinking, defeated figure of Martin. The story of 
Martin and the lost play had been dragged down 
to the level of a mere pot-house tradition in the 
saloons of Fourth Avenue but Arthur Nicholson 
was prepared to look at the matter somewhat 
differently; because he saw where the glimmer of 
genius lay in Martin. . . Immediately their talk was 
of the stage and of this misfortune. There were 
kindly gleams in the poet’s eyes as he listened, and in 
the music of his voice there was a golden sympathy. . . 
Martin felt as if this other was seeing the real truth of 
his soul through the almost divine sympathy of the 
artist. 

Arthur Nicholson saw with a clearness which was 
not for the eyes of common men the abyss of destruc- 
tion now gaping wide before this other who had 
fluttered moth-like around the flame. This saloon 
crawling was rapidly developing what was merely his 
misfortune into something which might come to be 
characterized later as the fine art of sponging when, with 
a theatrical swagger, and the full jargon of the stage, 
he would come round the stage doors of nights to negoti- 
ate loans of five dollars or so. This would be a terrible 
fate, thought Arthur, for one who had seen sufficient 


174 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


of the world’s beauty to write The Sybil and the Sphinx , 
or at least to evolve the idea from which it had 
been written. Strange, although the plays he had 
brought with him to America were literature, he had 
made a considerable amount of money out of them. 
Now he was going back to a quiet cottage in one of the 
hills of Dublin to write the poems, and was this young 
man who had seen a greater beauty than even he to 
be doomed to this sad condemnation. . . His poems 
in praise of the beauty of the world must henceforth 
be the merest lies if he did not hold out a helping hand 
for this poor, fallen one was his brother in the kinship 
of art. 

They turned into a shipping office. Scarcely seeming 
to realise the meaning of it, Martin saw Arthur Nicholson 
take some bills from a roll and hand them across the 
counter to a little weazened clerk who was chewing 
gum. As distantly remembered names he heard the 
words Ireland, Belfast and Dublin. . . Dublin! It 
suddenly appeared that many brave things had happened 
there. Dublin, that lovely place of light and beauty, 
where Ellen would meet him in the lamplit streets and 
they would talk again of plays and poetry and the 
hills of Dublin. Yes, Dublin was surely the place 
where he might re-habilitate himself. . . He had 
visions of walking with her towards the hills again on 
bright, idyllic evenings and on Sundays which would be 
all adoration. . . It seemed very strange that it was 
Ellen who was calling him back now and not either of 
the two who had so recently written to him, neither 
she who was bound to him by birth nor she who was 
bound to him by sin. The very thought seemed to 
give him a startling and swift interest in life. It brought 


THE PAGAN 


175 


him a surge of hope, too, which sang in his heart 
while Arthur Nicholson was doing this thing because 
the poet had seen that he had still some possibilities. . . 
For her, or because of her, he might yet do great 
things. . . 

Later Nicholson brought him to a grand hotel and 
entertained him to a costly supper. Yet it was 
the free tribute of one man to another, and he never 
even made him faintly feel under a compliment. In a 
bright moment it reminded Martin of another incident 
in literary history when Yeats met the author of The 
Playboy in Paris and turned his steps towards the Aran 
Islands, for this man too was equal to the loftiness 
of the thing he was doing. He was rescuing the makings 
of a writer from this place where there was neither light 
nor literature, nor happiness, nor hope, and send- 
ing him to Ireland where there was the essence 
and the making of all these things. . . They were very 
lords of language as they sat smoking good cigars amid 
the grandeur. Nicholson recited some of his best poems, 
and in return Martin told him the plots of plays and 
stories with which it was his intention yet to enrich 
the world. And even as they talked they conceived 
further beauty for the glory of inspiration was again 
their portion. . . The poet was not returning to Ireland 
just yet, but when he did he hoped Martin would call 
to see him at his cottage in the hills. . . “And you’ll 
give up pub-crawling, like a good fellow,” he said at 
parting. 

Next morning as he stood upon the deck of the ship 
that was to carry him to Ireland he thought more clearly 
among many other things of his own play, The Sybil 
and the Sphinx , and wondered why he should have 


176 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

thought of writing a play around the idea that life on 
this earth is but one act of the many act drama of the 
dream of personality towards the achievement of 
reality. . . It seemed at once queer and at the same 
time perfectly reasonable to think that everything that 
had already happened to him, even the beastly actuality 
of this sojourn in America was but part of a dream. . . 
Yet was there a sorrow upon him even in the moment of 
his tremendous thought — a powerful regret for some part 
of himself that had died. . . His regret seemed the only 
reality about him until Ignatius Nolan, that vague 
man, came running up the gangway to shake his hand 
at parting. In some quite unaccountable way he 
had got wind of his going. . . Just then the gangway 
was removed, and seeing him standing so sadly still upon 
the wharf a few seconds later, Martin thought that Nolan 
looked curiously like himself on that morning that Kitty 
had gone down to the sea. 


END OF BOOK III 


BOOK IV 

THE MAN 





























































































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THE MAN 


179 


BOOK IV 
THE MAN 
I 

M ARTIN was not sorry to leave behind that jumb- 
ling together of great facts which was represented 
by America. But the roar of it was still in his ears and 
the dazzling show of it was still in his eyes. . . Some- 
times he went to the place where a bronzed man passed 
out exorbitantly priced drinks through a hole. Already 
was he beginning to lose a portion of the money that 
remained from the roll of bills which Arthur Nicholson 
had passed to him after he had purchased a ticket which 
would take him to Londonderry and Belfast and Dublin. 
It had been very kind of the poet although the ticket 
only carried him steerage. 

Sometimes the sea looked so blue and cold, yet with 
a curious invitation upon its face after he had made a 
vain attempt to win forgetfulness. . . Drowning 
seemed as easy as any other way out of it, but even as 
he resolved upon the accomplishment of his own ending 
some unexpected light of his ambition would present it- 
self. He would touch some spring of character in one of 
his fellow-passengers or see some curl of beauty in the 
lift of the waves that made a painter’s vision to his 
poet’s eye. 

On the boat he was meeting rough, uncouth men 


180 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

who were enjoying the adventure of the passage, who 
relished the coarse food they were given, and who saw 
nothing that was an offence in the way they had to 
sleep and wash and perform the other different functions 
of the body. But to Martin there was something 
exceedingly gross about every circumstance of it, par- 
ticularly when he contrasted it with all he remem- 
bered of his crossing with Kitty. He had had leisure 
then and an opportunity of thinking and writing and 
reading, of even acting the part of W. B. Yeats, with 
his big, knotted tie, his long stride and his hands en- 
twined behind him. Now he was so much the subject 
for a character sketch, a character sketch still of a grossly 
realistic kind, such as he had often met with in a Russian 
novel. His clothing was now in a state of sad decay, 
but mercifully, his coat, his great artistic coat, still 
hid him. Sometimes he would take a peep at his few 
other soiled belongings, especially at the collar that Kitty 
had once made an attempt to make up. It was stiff 
and thick and brown with starch. Yet had Kitty 
once been a conductor of ecstasy in this world. Her 
body had brought delight through his eyes and his 
body, the poor shell of clay that now housed his torment, 
had become vibrant with the beauty of passion. He 
shuddered at the thought that he was still moving nearer 
to her. . . 

But on the morning that he caught sight of Ireland, 
the old, beloved country, the surge of youth and beauty 
rose in him again, calling upon his ambition to make 
him greater than he had been. It seemed in this moment 
that he owed his country something. It was there 
that he had been born, and there seemed something 
suddenly akin to him in the very nature of the fields. 


THE MAN 


181 


There were men in Ireland too whose loves, whether in 
literature or labour, were all clean and unsullied, but his 
had been carried into life upon the lusts of clay. . . 

The landing at Derry was quite uneventful, his wait 
for a few hours without incident. It was only when 
he sat in the train going through the dark night that 
his mind began to turn again in such a way as to show 
that he was still portion of a certain reality. He opened 
the bag which held his soiled collars and his other things 
and took out the bits of the book he had been so long 
striving to write. . . It all seemed so sketchy, so in- 
complete. . . He remembered all the books he had read, 
the novels, and thought upon their ordered completeness, 
exhibiting the peace and leisure in which their authors 
must have set about their work. Not so he. He 
did not seem to know where to begin, and as the 
train sped southward he took a pencil from his 
pocket and began to write. Already was he the litterateur 
again in Ireland, but there was something almost patheti- 
cally incoherent in the lines he began to scribble under 
the heading “Foreword.” 

“I, Martin Duignan, sit me down in a kind of despair 
to write what I must say about the world and 
to give to those who have leisure to read 
some idea of the strange adventures of the spirit 
through which the mortal and immortal parts of 
me have passed. For the deeds of the body colour 
the life of the soul. It has taken me all the years 
of my life to learn this truth, but I know it now. 
Oh! would that the knowledge had come as it 
comes to saner and happier mortals, and then my 
life might now be a less fearful thing to see as I 
now see it. But it pleased the Lords of Life and 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


182 

Death to make an example of me. No man knows 
my story, and no man might ever know, but then 
I might have fallen short of the example for which I 
was intended. If only I could shock people into a 
full appreciation of my degradation, then I might 
have some comfort in thinking that my extraordinary 
life had not been lived in vain.” 

It was a poor, weak beginning. It seemed to offend 
against all the canons of art as he had learned them at 
the Tower, from Sean O’Hanlon in their conver- 
sation, and from seeing Pearse and McDonagh in the 
National Library, from Phelim O’Brien and the unpub- 
lished critics of “The Daffodils.” He knew the 
word that must be used to describe it if ever it came to 
be read by those vehement men, an ugly obscene word 
which might sometimes be seen scrawled on the walls 
of urinals. . . He searched further and found another 
attempt to set down his life in the form of an auto- 
biography written out as a novel in which he was the 
leading character. He read: 

“Those curious sufferings from his eighteenth 
year onwards seemed to have twisted his mind a 
little in the direction of morbid callousness which 
I can now excuse and see as something altogether 
different in the light of the confession of these 
pages. T am a weakling, I know very well that 
I lack something — strength of will, I suppose/ he 
would often say after some particularly unlucky 
reverse. As he stood cowering before a world 
he could not understand his opinion of him- 
self seemed true enough, but now that I have read 
through his own account of his life and seen in how 


THE MAN 


183 

many phases the manuscript was blotted by tears 
I have viewed more clearly the heart of the man. 
It was a heart so filled with great good nature as 
to be too good for the humanity he met and the 
bright mind which accompanied it out of place in 
the sombre colour scheme which enfolded his life. 
His life had come to be ruined and ruined most 
thoroughly by' influences altogether outside the true 
personality which was himself. And continually he 
would say with mournful insistence: ‘There is 
no use in attempting a task so impossible, one 
cannot rebuild a broken life, but, as one waits in 
patience for the end, a certain amount of morbid 
pleasure may be derived from watching the crum- 
bling of the ruins. There is something of comforting 
curiosity in such observation. But to begin again. 
No. The drunkard hates the one who insists on 
saving him from his beloved pleasure, the dreamer 
shrinks in loathing from the hand which would 
snatch him out of his imaginary paradise, and surely 
no one, least of all myself, would be so unkind as 
to take from me the means of my great enjoyment 
here in this little room.” 

Yet in spite of all the blinding egotism of this, it 
would seem in odd moments, even to himself, that there 
might be hope in him still but for one deplorable fact. 
Continually it appeared that he wished to excuse the 
mess he had made of things on the ground that in him, 
beyond the common man, the flame of genius had been 
lit by an unseen hand. It was very queer indeed that 
one whose early years had been trained to the beauty 
of self-sacrifice should thus have his mind turned into 
the ways of a consuming egotism. . . And in this 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


184 

moment had been given to him to see the opening of 
his eyes in all the beauty of Ireland and the glory it 
was to sacrifice oneself. 

In “The Daffodils” it was supposed that a would-be 
writer must spend several years of hopeless drifting 
before he could consider himself sufficiently endowed 
with wisdom or vision or genius, to see “the thing” 
as it should be seen. These they always spoke of 
with affectionate experience as “the wander years.” . . 
Now was he returning from his wander years, and surely 
there was promise behind that fine brow of his across 
which the wind from the open window of the carriage 
now blew his dusky hair. He was very young, not more 
than twenty-two. A beautiful girl was still in love 
with him, and in Glannidan there were the sunlit 
fields of his youth to which his mother still called him. 
It was impossible for him to realise just yet how his 
mind might turn or what scheme for the future it might 
embrace. But there were the things that men and women 
had told him of his genius and there was the life he had 
lived. . . 

At one moment it seemed that everything must be 
for Ellen, at another his mother, his sister and the child 
would be before his mind in a phrase which was the 
phrase of the countryside: 

“In a bad way, aye, indeed: they must be in a bad 
way.” 

He had known of sons who had done brave things 
to keep the old homestead still standing, and for all that 
the later episodes of his life might prove his cowardice, 
he had worked as well and as bravely as any man. It 
was the turning of him from his natural work that 
had ruined him, this and probably some legacy in the 


THE MAN 185 

blood from his father. His life was again trembling in 
the balance. . . 

That morning he slept in Belfast for a few hours, 
and in the afternoon went on to Dublin. There settled 
a perfect and steady greyness upon his mind as he 
drew near the city, for he knew that Dublin, for good 
or ill, was the place from which his final decision must 
spring. . . When he got out at Amiens Street he left 
his belongings in the parcel office and went on into the 
city. He anxiously scanned the clocks as he hurried 
along to meet Ellen. He ran into George’s Street, 
and was there just at the moment when the girls were 
coming out of the shop. . . One by one they tripped 
down the stairs and hurried out into the evening. . . 
And still she did not come. . . There was upon him 
such a fearful anxiety. . . It suddenly seemed as if 
he had come all the way from America to effect this 
meeting. . . Then one of the girls who knew him came 
up and said: 

“Oh, Mr. Duignan, did you hear about Ellen? 
She left the Tower and the shop here and everything 
and went off to America the other day. Went off to join 
you out there, she said. And now, isn’t it curious to 
think that you’re back again. Did you not meet her 
there at all and she so dying fond of you? ...” 

There was a good deal more gabble of the same kind, 
but the blinding fact that continually emerged was 
identical — Ellen was gone from Dublin, and gone from 
him suddenly was his brave attempt to rehabilitate him- 
self. . . He was dazed. . . He remembered another 
leave-taking after which he had gone to buy forgetfulness 
in a saloon on 14th Street. . . Now he almost raced in 
the direction of “The Daffodils.” 


i86 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


At once, upon entering, so powerfully was the literary 
sense in him stirred that he was compelled to let his 
present sorrow slip quietly into the grey scheme of 
his life. . .For there were the poets, critics, artists, 
scholars, journalists, professors, and all the miscellaneous 
hangers-on of literature who might be inclusively 
termed “The Dublin Decadence,” still in the various 
stages of repose in which he had left them on his last 
day in Dublin. . . They were sitting in exactly the 
same positions at the tables, taking their usual quantity 
of drink and contributing their customary remarks 
to the symposium. . . As soon as he had gulped down 
his first bottle of stout it seemed to Martin in a moment 
of sudden illumination that even as men had been caught 
in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum so had these 
young Irish litterati been caught in the lava of 
their immense egotism, suddenly paralysed as it 
were by the great gestures of Yeats and Synge and 
“JE” And so, embedded in the failure of their execu- 
tion, they had turned to spiteful, poisonous criticism. 
. . . The stout flowed as usual ; the evening faded into 
night, yet so blindly powerful was the inner concentra- 
tion of these young men that they scarcely seemed to 
have noticed the absence of him since his last visit. He 
had been more than six months in America, yet Phelim 
O’Brien asked suddenly: 

“What night were you here last? Tuesday, was it?” 

“I haven’t been here for quite a long while,” said 
Martin suddenly vexed that his presence or absence 
should not have been considered more important than 
this. 

“I suppose you have been working at the book. How 
is it getting along?” 


THE MAN 


187 


“Slowly,” said Martin. 

“Look here,” said the leader of the decadents twisting 
his dark moustache with his womanish hands. “You’re 
too damned distinguished looking for a man that has 
written so little!” 

The night dwindled somehow after this fashion until 
all were sufficiently drunk to bring it to the usual end- 
ing. . . The nodding plumes began to pass by the 
window. Martin fell into chat with Gillachrist McBrady, 
who had been introduced to him as “the new realist in 
Irish.” . . At closing time they staggered away together 
toward a doss-house on the south side of the city, Gilla- 
christ McBrady mouthing broken English, the par- 
ticular form of affectation which distinguished him, and 
Martin with all thought of Ellen becoming gradually 
blotted from his mind. 


i88 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


II 

A S befitted a member of the shining circle of “The 
Daffodils, 1 ” Gillachrist McBrady was writing a 
book, a novel. 

“This is going to be one of the greatest things since 
Synge,” Phelim O’Brien had said, although in making 
this momentous pronouncement he had only the word of 
Gillachrist for it. 

Gillachrist was merely one of these unhappy mortals 
who in Dublin, of all places, are soonest ruined by the 
possession of a little ability. Irish was his particular 
obsession, but with him it was not merely the knowledge 
of a few harmless and unnecessary words. He really 
meant it, and had as well the right idea about the revival 
of Irish, and it was this: that if a man were suddenly 
to write a great literary masterpiece in Irish, say a 
masterpiece of fiction, then he would have done more 
enduring work for the future of Irish than talking the 
biggest chunks of Irish in the hearing of people who 
did not know any Irish. This, of course, was an elderly 
idea of George Moore’s, but Gillachrist said that it was 
original to himself. 

After the dark lapse of a drunken sleep in the ver- 
minous doss-house they went down and washed amid 
the lashing and splashings and razor-stroppings of the 
common wash-house. The new Irish novelist was 
sick and moody, and when he spoke at all it was in 
gloomy and profane Gaelic. They went into the common 
dining-room, and soon Martin was seeing that place 
with the eyes of the mind of Gillachrist McBrady. . . 


THE MAN 


189 

It was a queer place surely, this common dining-room 
of the doss-house, noisy, cold and gloomy, like a place 
out of a story by Maxim Gorky. The men in the place 
peered hungrily through the grey of the morning. 
Their heads were bent low, and they seemed unmindful 
of everything but the food before them on the greasy 
deal tables — the crude, ugly mess that men devour to 
keep the life in them. . . Before them on the tables 
most of the eaters had a little box, a disused soap or 
starch box, and in this was ranged methodically a set of 
canisters. These numerous canisters held the raw begin- 
nings of the food — a pinch of tea, a spoonful of sugar, a 
scrap of sickly-looking butter, a bit of desolate and for- 
gotten meat. The eaters made a great bustle as they 
passed and repassed between the tables and the common 
cooking range. . . Always as they returned to the tables 
with the cooked stuff the joy of their hearts 
sprang into their faces. Many a smile half-formed 
itself upon many a wan and famished face. But these 
looks of jubilation soon gave way to looks of resolution 
as they devoured the food. No man lifted his eyes 
more than six inches from his plate until the last few 
scraps remained. . . Then, filled with food and com- 
placency, he gazed calmly around. If his neighbour 
at the next table having a larger feed had not yet got 
right through it he would not regard him with any kind 
of envy; if a neighbour at the next table had nothing, 
the man full of new confidence would look upon him 
with disdain. It was queer that such a feeling should 
arise in his breast, but, inevitably, it would come when 
he began to compliment himself that, somehow or other, 
he had managed to get a full meal to-day, by work, 
by begging, by stealing. . . The others, although the 


190 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


same broad fields were opened to them had not pros- 
pered in their endeavours. The difference in achieve- 
ment was the gulf between them. One by one they 
arose with deliberation and proceeded to put away 
their eating utensils. An old pensioner who had been 
a cavalry man was always the first to arise. He carried 
himself erectly and without any suggestion of decay. 
His pension assured him of food, and so the bending 
ache of hunger had never attacked him. . . He was 
now being closely observed by an old withered man of 
seventy who shook with the fatigues of many hungers. 
. . There were days when this other sat looking at 
the pensioner with a dim smile on his face. On such 
days he was hungry, but the pensioner sat straight and 
unmoved. On days after the old man had taken a 
drink or two he sometimes observed the shadow of a 
sneer hovering around the pensioner’s mouth. . .Now 
the present being such a moment he did a strange 
thing. He rose feebly from the greasy table, and taking 
therefrom his eating utensils proceeded to set them out 
in fine array upon the table. Then hurrying to the 
common cooking range, he made a great pretence that 
he was cooking something. He kept up a continual 
passage between the table and the range until the pen- 
sioner had finished his meal and went away from the 
greasy table. . . Then, as his grey smile returned, he 
gathered up his things, and, replacing them in the locker, 
went away unfilled, but triumphant. . . 

The girls who sold the food seemed to have a varied 
experience of every customer. They sometimes saw 
a man throw a pound note upon the counter with a 
magnificent swagger, and they saw the same man a 
few days later begging a piece of stale bread for a half- 


THE MAN 


191 


penny. They could always tell the amount of a man’s 
possessions by the way in which he approached the 
counter. . . 

When any of the girls were dismissed for being too 
cheeky there was great rejoicing among the patrons 
of the dining-room of the doss-house. It was grand to 
think that the dispensers of food, some of those who 
had handled it and been so near to it might yet be 
brought down to learn the true value of the food, to 
desire it fiercely and strive to get it in penn’orths and 
ha’porths. 

The dark man who mopped up the mess and put the 
cups and saucers back into a clean pile behind the 
counter also passed frequent comments upon the food 
and the feeders. But one man beyond all those who 
came here had set himself apart as a critic of the place. 
Another, and always the same person, accompanied 
him, but the latter was merely a patient listener to 
the criticism. The critic always took up the same seat 
near the counter where he could have a full view of 
everyone’s purchase. Written clearly in his mind was a 
list of the articles which constituted everybody’s ordinary 
meal, and when these happened to be exceeded or 
abridged he was filled with annoyance. Then, with his 
patient auditor, he had tried to puzzle out what had 
happened to the unfortunate man. Was it lack of 
funds? Was it loss of appetite resulting from a drunken 
night? Had he been suddenly left a fortune? Was 
it the beginning of miserliness? Had he robbed some- 
body? Had he got a job? As the critic observed 
the man’s method of eating, he elaborated and con- 
firmed his suspicions. There was yet another who 
might sometimes be seen hovering near the dining- 


192 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

room door. He seldom entered the room. It was his 
continual fancy to visualise it. 

“The most pathetic times in this house,” he used to 
say, “are, first of all, when a man has to look on at 
the others eating and he after coming up from washing 
himself. Now isn’t it a hard kind of a case when you 
have to go out to do your endeavours for the day with 
the thought of all the others’ fine breakfasts in your 
mind? But, d’ye know what I’m going to tell you, it’s 
a harder case to come in after a wet, hard day 
with your heart falling away from you and you not to 
have the price of anything to put a bit of life or fire 
into you at all, and then to think of stumbling up to 
bed with no thought in your mind but the weary, 
killing length of the steps.” 

And so each of them in turn struggled into life before 
the mind of Martin, their visions narrowed by their 
dreams of food. . . When hunger was not actually 
upon them the fear of foodlessness seemed to rise up 
an awful monster before their eyes. As they bent over 
the greasy tables their fugitive faces glowering in the 
grey light one could easily feel that hunger was the 
eternal hound upon their tracks. . . 

Although Gillachrist McBrady could not very clearly 
express his meaning in English, not at least in regard 
to the finer points of characterisation, the artist that 
was in Martin rose complementary to the deficiency 
originating from the obsession of the other with another 
tongue. They sat there amongst the crowd, two men 
of art whose minds moved gradually from the pathos 
to the humour of the situation. . . Both had sprung 
from the peasant in obedience to the same impulse 


THE MAN 


193 


which had called them away from the plough in the 
Ireland of their time. Either condition, that of 
peasantry or literature, might appear healthy enough of 
itself, but it was pitiful to think that it had led them 
to this, to become part of the dregs of the population. 
Why had both drifted into this condition which betokened 
social failure? This fable about coming here to look 
for copy was only a pretence — they had made copy of 
themselves, they were really unable to afford a night’s 
lodging in any better place. 

They parted after a drink in the public-house across 
the street from the doss-house. The taste of their pints 
was disgusting as they stood there while the old women 
with the rusty shawls and dirty cans crowded in around 
them, and there came a thick trail of speech in the lower 
Dublin accent across and about the shop like the trail 
of a slimy thing. 

“Fine copy!” said Gillachrist McBrady, as he let down 
the last gulp of his pint. 

“Aye!” said Martin, making a parody of his action. 

Then they put down the measures quietly and went 
out. Martin moped slowly about some of the old ways 
and Dublin began to return gradually to his realisation. 
It was a rich and beautiful sensation, this quiet un- 
veiling, as it were, of a lovely picture which for the 
moment had been obscured from the vision. He went 
into St. Stephen’s Green and sat upon the very seat from 
which he and Kitty had thrown crumbs to the birds upon 
the lake. . . 

“The doctor told me that the baby will come in May.” 

This sentence from her letter now burned itself in 
his mind. It was May now, and spring had reached 
the beauty of its fulness upon the flowers and trees. . . 


194 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


It was curious to think of this coming of new life for 
which he only was responsible. . . It was woeful to sit 
here thinking, thinking. He who had once possessed kin- 
ship to beauty was now wallowing in the slough, even as 
Gillachrist McBrady, whose ambition had taken the 
poisonous turn of talking about a novel which he was 
going to write in Irish. He had been equipping himself 
for the writing of some such story, but, but. . . 

As he wandered aimlessly out of the Green he came 
upon a way which led towards Ranelagh and along which 
he had often gone in the lamplit evenings with Ellen. 
And to think that all their talking had brought them 
only to this, a quiet parting and a meeting that had been 
missed because of the queer fate that had enmeshed 
him. . . He retraced his steps and turned into an- 
other street. . .Nov/ he was meeting people who all 
seemed at some time or other to have been con- 
nected with the Tower Theatre. Even now there was a 
certain agreeable surprise in knowing that he had risen 
up from the plough into that glorious purlieu of the 
pen in Ireland. It suddenly appeared as the place from 
which all the adventure of his life had sprung. . . 
And yet, as he moved along Cuffe Street and past the 
house of Mrs. McQuestion, his life appeared to have 
been coloured by other influences more firmly embedded 
in his being. . . It was from this very house, and be- 
cause of him, that the half-clad girl had gone to join 
the women of the shawls. . . He was a pretty scoundrel 
surely, a traitor even to Arthur Nicholson, for although 
not yet twenty-four hours returned to Dublin he had 
already slipped back a considerable distance into the way 
that had ruined him, and Nicholson had asked him to 
give up pub-crawling. 


THE MAN 


195 

He began to hurry in the direction of the National 
Library. It was here he would meet Sean O’Hanlon with 
whom he had gone a certain distance down a starry 
way. . . They shook hands warmly, while O’Hanlon 
spoke again of Ireland. 

“There’s no place like it,” said the idealist in his flat, 
Dublin accent; “we’re going to do something for Kath- 
leen-ni-Houlihan and I want you to join us. Meet me 
at five. This is pay-day, and we’ll have a little snack at 
‘The Laurel.’ ” 

Martin began to move aimlessly about the Library 
looking at the new books in the case and at the authors 
newly arrived in the index. There was an immediate 
personal cause for this exploration although it was 
but dimly perceptible to his own mind. He was 
possessed of the remote idea that some day his name, 
too, should appear there. Now and then he turned 
around to observe those who came in through the turn- 
stiles, strangers to him for the most part, new students 
at University College, young men and women eager for 
jobs and knowledge. . . Then there 1 were the famous, 
old frequenters whose tastes were on histories and sta- 
tistics and encyclopedias, a dismal crowd. The poets were 
absent; he did not see McDonagh or Pearse. He saw 
little knots of men conversing eagerly on the steps of 
the Library as he came out with O’Hanlon. He 
imagined them to be talking fiercely against England. 
The face of the idealist was lit by a quiet smile. . . 
Then he suddenly turned into a house in Kildare Street 
and emerged ten minutes later wearing a uniform such as 
Martin had seen upon others although he had been only 
a short while returned to Dublin. There seemed to be 
something theatrical about this military ostentation 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


196 

which might be spoiled by the slightest touch of realism, 
as Martin had seen the effect of an Irish National For- 
ester’s Robert Emmet uniform spoiled, on the day of 
some great National demonstration, by a heavy man thus 
richly attired stumbling drunk out of a pub in Parnell 
Street, the froth of fresh porter in brown beads upon 
his dark moustache. 

“I couldn’t wear the blessed thing in the Library, 
for you see it is anathema there. A Government 
institution, you know, and this is not a Government 
uniform.” A little later, over a bottle of stout and a 
snack in the bar of “The Laurel,” O’Hanlon told 
Martin of this thing that had happened in their midst, 
the warlike preparation which had begun to emerge out 
of the whirl of the world war, this proposed attempt 
through the possible desolation of youth and bravery to 
pluck the mantle of sorrow from the shoulders of Kath- 
leen-ni-Houlihan. Martin could not feel himself 
suddenly entering into the great enthusiasm which made 
Sean almost a poet as he talked on. It was just the 
kind of talk which Martin had so far been unable to 
understand. It sprang from the writings of Davis and 
Mitchel and Fintan Lalor, and told of the building of 
the nation from within. Vaguely all that philosophy 
of poetical patriotism included him in the poetic signi- 
ficance it gave the nation, but it expected him first to 
be a nation-builder, a fighter, while his mind was alto- 
gether so subtle and so minutely threaded by cross- 
currents of sympathy that he could not suddenly see him- 
self in this state which would seem to be the very heart’s 
desire of Sean O’Hanlon. It was O’Hanlon who had 
led him childlike into the ways of literature. His mind 
had been crude enough before the coming of that guid- 


1 


THE MAN 


197 


ance, but now its innermost workings were so richly 
contrived that, apart from all incidents of politics or 
government or nationality, he could view it at any point 
and see its humanity and its meaning. Sean O’Hanlon 
must have passed through this struggle, too, and 
triumphed even to the extent of his present enthusiasm, 
for all soldiering, whether for Britannia or Kathleen-ni- 
Houlihan, was essentially crude and in perpetual conflict 
with the gentle inclinations of the poetic tempera- 
ment. . . They had been a long time talking between 
their lapses of thoughtful silence, but at last they arose 
and went out into the lamplit streets. 

It was now about the hour when Dublin is most 
beautiful, when the very sounds in the street seem 
to acquire some of the colour of the evening and 
all things drop quietly in processional order into a 
grand monotone. Beyond the continuous boom of 
the hurrying trams could be heard surprising sounds 
breaking in upon the evening, the children singing and 
dancing round a barrel-organ in a distant street, the 
steady, adenoidal chorus of the newsboys. Passing 
“The Daffodils” they stood for a moment to gaze at 
the vase of well-known flowers drooped desolately in the 
window. 

They saw the gesticulating litterati reflected upon the 
frosted glass. . . Each thought simultaneously of 
Wilde’s poem of The Harlot* s House, and the quo- 
tation broke from the lips of O’Hanlon while Martin 
nodded in exultation because of the coincidence of 
remembrance. 

. . . Like wire-pulled automatons 

Slim silhouetted skeletons 


198 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


Sometimes a horrible marionette 
Came out and smoked a cigarette 
Upon the steps like a live thing. . . 

Then, in the kinship and love of poetry, they walked 
on with their heads held high. Each felt that it is not so 
easy to move a man from his inner impulse. O’Hanlon, 
because he had lifted his eyes beyond himself to the 
glory of the newer Ireland, seemed the nobler figure. 
Yet, Martin, because he had not merged his egotism, 
because he still stood in nearer relation to all that was 
himself, remained nearer poetry. But there was upon 
both at parting the full sadness of their minds’ endow- 
ment. . . 

Martin stood a long time at the corner of Nassau 
Street wondering blindly where he might spend the 
night. The doss-house again was pretty well all he 
could afford. . . Suddenly he saw a face looking at him 
long and strangely apart from the hurrying throng. It 
was Margaret Murtagh, his lover landlady. He thought 
she looked older than when he had last seen her, and 
her dust-coat, too, seemed shabby beyond recovery. She 
smiled, and then came over to him. Momentarily he 
wondered what her purpose could be. What else except 
to dun him for what he owed her? This was the im- 
mediate revenge of life for his attempt to find a little 
poetic exaltation while in the company of O’Hanlon. He 
knew a sudden and powerful depression, but he had al- 
ready found himself in this situation. 

‘Tm sorry,” he said, “awfully sorry, but on the evening 
I went to America I hadn’t a second to spare and I 
could not possibly manage to see you. I’m sorry.” 

He half-expected a sharp, distrustful, reproachful 


answer, but she only looked up at him with her big, 
tired eyes, and said: 

“Oh, not at all, Mr. Duignan, don’t mention it. I 
always knew that you’d come back to me some day, and 
just imagine meeting you like this! Come on up to the 
house and have a bottle of stout or something!” 

As they went up Grafton Street and Harcourt Street 
she was prattling continuously although he spoke little. 
He was catching glimpses of her story, her shattered ro- 
mance with its dingy, quiet ending. . . 

As they sat facing one another later in the kitchen 
after she had given him a good meal they seemed to be 
surrounded by an atmosphere pregnant of happen- 
ing. . . All the boarders were in their beds, and there 
was no sound about them save that of an occasional late 
pedestrian going up or down the South Circular 
Road. . . She was a fine woman still, her face still soft 
and strong in its frame of billowy hair. There was a look 
in her eyes as if she had become suddenly famished for 
love. Her talk was continually interspersed with such 
phrases — “And musha, sure I was only a weeshey girl at 
the time and I going to school.” Through their talk the 
scenes of their youth were returning, and there was fall- 
ing upon him crushingly a leaden sadness. . . 

They remained talking far into the night here in the 
kitchen. At last they spoke only in snatches. . . But, 
gradually, her purpose grew before his mind from which 
all realisation had been almost blotted by her desire. 
She wanted him to stay with her, to live with her, or 
to marry her — the solicitor had failed her and she after 
keeping him so many years. He had gone away after 
owing her four or five years’ board. . . 

Martin could have a comfortable, easy life of it here, 


200 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


and could go on with his writing in peace. It was a 
great chance for him happening, so luckily, too, at this 
very time. . . But the mere thought seemed, somehow, 
the end of his great ambition and the interment of his 
very soul — a common boarding-house bully, the very no- 
tion was appalling. At last the thoughts of both retreated 
into a very forest of gloom. . . 

He rose hurriedly for the morning was already high 
and warm, and left the house with an air of decision. 


THE MAN 


201 


III 

H E walked with the speed of a fugitive down the 
South Circular Road and up through the city. 
The sense of the increasing degradation which had 
befallen him was heavy about his eyes and his mind. 
Henceforth, what better was he than those men, police- 
men and Irishmen, who lived on women in New York 
City! It had been that way with him and Kitty, but 
her beauty had somehow kept him from falling down to 
this filthy level. His life had dwindled deplorably, but 
as he went up the hill by Findlater’s Church and past 
Parnell Square into old Dublin, with its Georgian houses, 
he felt the full, surging beauty of this lovely city. . . 
He thought of lines from poems as he hurried along, and 
as he went past the Roman Catholic Church at Phibs- 
borough the keen summer wind seemed to strip his mind 
of all sin and shame. 

Already Margaret Murtagh was no more to him than 
Kitty Haymer. . . He seemed free again as the wind 
blowing over the fields. He marched on with a fine 
swing, a glow in his body and a glow in his mind. He 
felt freer now than on any other day during his life 
and he seemed to be at the beginning of a new life. 
The summer morning was wide and windy upon the 
green fields. . . After he had walked a mile or so he 
lit a cigarette and stood for a moment to look across 
a wall at the cattle and sheep standing there so peace- 
fully in the high, luxurious grass. . . He fell into a 
trance of remembered beauty and lines from Yeats be- 
gan to throng through his mind: 


202 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 
Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 
White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine 
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves; 

And Mid-May’s eldest child 

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 

It was strange that this brief, half-dreamy repetition 
or recollection of these lines should be running through 
his mind now as he journeyed this road way in County 
Dublin. There was so little that might be considered 
poetical in the appearance of the men he was meeting. 
They looked at him in sullen distrust. Who in 
the world was this stranger walking along the 
road? Immediately Martin felt himself cowering be- 
fore the power of their inquisitive stare, that power 
he had felt of old in Glannidan. They were exactly 
like those he had known in that place, and as they 
met him amid the brightness of the summer road he 
could hear them muttering to themselves: “Who’s 
that now?” “Who’s that, I wonder?” “Damn 
it, he’s city dressed, so he is, and it’s hellish curious to 
see him tramping!” “Maybe he had a motor car or 
a motor bike and it’s what it broke down on him!” 
“But, begad, it must be tramping he is for his boots 
is dusty and he looks tired.” “An educated young 
fellow, too, by the looks of him, but he must have made 
damn little use of it or it’s not tramping he’d be now.” 
“I suppose he hasn’t as much money in his pocket 


THE MAN 


203 


at the present time as would jingle on a tombstone.” 
By realisation of their soliloquies or their talk the glory 
of his mood was becoming surmounted and the fine plan 
he had so unaccountably formed in Margaret Murtagh’s 
house was becoming suddenly abridged. He was 
beginning to feel the power which might break him after 
his return to the clay. They would be like this about 
him always, such people inquiring into his every action, 
endeavouring to peer into his very soul, making every 
possible attempt to trace the recent course of his life 
and to indicate for his torture this downward curve 
by which it had returned to the clay. That strange 
retreat would be for ever before his mind all starkly 
in accusation, the few bright splashes of ecstasy here and 
there being almost obliterated by the massive and 
quiet gloom of this ending whose beginning had been 
Kitty Haymer. 

Now, the occasional farmers going towards their 
fields were being interspersed by men of the tramp class. 
They, too, looked at him in distrust for, although some 
subtle feeling of kindred told them that the same hideous 
torture of life had driven him to the road, he still wore 
good clothes, the trappings of respectability, and they 
had their suspicions of him. He had not become wholly 
emancipated, although he had tasted some of the fresh- 
ness and freedom of the road. 

It was pleasant to come into a tidy village on the 
mearing as it were, between Meath and Dublin, and to 
think upon its history as he came. It was curious to 
remember that in other centuries men had moved 
about here pretty much as they were moving now. 
Why was it that they were so much after a pattern, 
these Irish villages, so stereotyped? There was 


204 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


scarcely a variation. The Protestant church at one 
end and the Catholic chapel at the other, a few ivy- 
covered cottages in the centre and a few more cottages 
straggling away down the roads which led from it; the 
forge with its door shaped like a horse-shoe, leading into 
the dark, heavy smelly atmosphere within; the black- 
smith coming over from the anvil with a red-hot shoe 
and burning the hoof of a horse, while the street seemed 
to have been suddenly filled with the stink of burning 
horn. A little further on was the aged, humped cobbler, 
looking strangely caricatured behind a bubble window, 
a handful of tacks in his mouth and all his philosophy 
of life and death simmering up in his mind and ready 
to overflow through tacks and all upon the entrance of 
any customer. Then came the dressmaker with sore, 
watery eyes, immensely patient at her machine, the next 
house being a hardware shop with the agricultural im- 
plements outside the door, further on a public-house 
and then another and still another public-house, for 
drink is a necessary aid in man’s battle with the fields. 
The barracks with passive peelers leaning against the 
door. All these were here. 

Martin went into what seemed the most quiet of the 
pubs. Although he had been unable to afford the 
train fare from Dublin to Ballycullen he had still a few 
shillings in his possession, and he was dusty and tired 
and still thirty miles from his native place. He threw 
out threepence for a pint and another penny for a bun. 
He sat down on the end of a porter barrel, but, for a 
few minutes, was too tired either to eat or drink. His 
mind was in a state of semi-vacancy over which easily 
flowed the talk of those around him. It seemed that 
there were a number of men going out to cut a meadow 


THE MAN 


205 


of first crop grass and that there was a great discussion 
in progress as to the exact amount of drink they would 
require to sustain them in their labours. . . They were 
fine, bronzed fellows with wiry stubbles, and it seemed 
unbelievable that Martin had once been like them. . . 
Yet he had not been altogether like them, for in Glan- 
nanea he had never taken porter to drown the sorrow of 
his labour. . .Yet, through power of the vicissitudes 
through which he had passed, was he now about to 
drink a pint, so he suddenly grew into sympathy with 
them and listened. . . The Tower had taught him some 
of the tricks of literature or, as some of the critics he 
had foreshadowed would put it, the placing of his ear 
to a crevice in the floor. He found himself listening 
for the intonation of the Syngian speech, but it was 
notably absent. This mixture of blasphemy and dirt 
was certainly no literary medium. After much wrang- 
ling and grinning and spitting and lighting of their 
pipes they took their drinks hurriedly and left the 
bar. 

He turned to his pint and his bun, and the bored, 
oily publican, sticking a stub of indelible pencil into his 
mouth every second or so as he proceeded with some 
calculation, was observing him furtively from beneath 
the brim of his wide, white hat. It almost seemed as 
if he were making a mathematical explanation for his own 
satisfaction of the extent of the sudden and swift degra- 
dation which had befallen Martin. 

He drank the pint without much enjoyment for he 
grew suddenly fearful of further scrutiny and was 
soon slipping quietly down the unfrequented side of 
the village street. On the open road once more his 
thoughts arose to torture him. It seemed that it was 


206 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

now to be a fight between his own personality and the 
combined personalities of those from whom he had 
sprung. . . Their horrible inquisitiveness would be con- 
tinually compelling him to remember the life through 
which he had passed. It would hold continual promise 
of torment. It was quite impossible to think that what- 
ever powers his mind possessed might ever dominate 
their minds towards respect for him, either reading or 
writing they would think of as a most laughable waste 
of time. It was difficult to fully realise his return to the 
clay even as it was more amazingly difficult to realise 
how far he had moved away from it. . . 

He could hear the noise of a motor moving towards 
him along the road. Then it passed contemptuously in 
a cloud of dust. The car contained only Austin Fagan. 
. . . The sudden flashing-back of time and event and 
place did not immediately strike him as a coincidence 
of fiction for the Clerk of the Union went every other 
day to Dublin in quest of joy. . . But the small and 
splendid motor was somewhat of a surprise. It formed 
proof of the extent to which Austin had thriven in the 
absence of Martin. A motor-car, imagine, although even 
the motor bicycle had made them curse to a shocking 
extent. Martin’s ears grew warm as he thought of the 
words they must be using about Austin now. If he 
ever heard them again in the spaces of their work in 
the fields. . . This, above all, seemed to affect him 
with a deeper sense of misgiving of the life into which 
he was returning, his sensibility might never be able 
to triumph over the surge of anger this would bring to 
his blood — to think of Austin Fagan and his sister 
Brigid. 

Towards evening he went into a farmer’s place for 


THE MAN 


207 


a drink of water. The people of the house were taking 
their tea and invited him to join them, which he did, 
gladly. . . He fell into admiration of the healthy 
appetite of the men who came in from the fields. The 
women of the house looked at him in concern. It must 
be his pale, handsome face, he thought. . . After a 
rest and a chat by the fire, when the night had fallen, 
he went on upon his further journey to Glannidan and 
Glannanea. 


ao8 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


IV 


LTHOUGH the physical exhaustion of Martin was 



great his mind was driven down to a greater 


weariness as he entered the boreen which led up to his 
mother’s house. In one moment it seemed the most 
natural thing in the world that he should be returning; 
at another it appeared a mean and despicable thing and 
an offence against his manhood as well, this slinking 
home, beaten and ashamed; but had his mother not 
invited him to return after the departure of Jamesey 
Cassels from the household; had she not pressed him to 
return just quite recently? But, doubtless, his mother 
had striven to magnify him in their eyes and they ex- 
pected great things of him, these ignorant, anxious people 
of the boreens. It was not usual to return, from America, 
above all places, without the signs of success upon one. 
Those who had never won success never thought of re- 
turning, but he was an exception. 

This continual thought that he was an exception 
sufficiently denoted the full strength to which his egotism 
had arisen and was earnest sufficient of the remarkable 
conflict which was about to be inaugurated. There 
were the fields about him, their mearings dimly defined 
in the half-light, and from out them seemed to come 
a continual crush of little memories, a flow of small 
tortures mingled curiously with remembrance of glad 
moments he had spent with Lucy Flynn. . . The stars 
were bright in the young summer sky, and it seemed 
a very glad thing indeed to be coming down the home- 
ward curve of the clay now. A kind of wild happiness 


THE MAN 


209 


seemed to claim him as he came up to his mother’s 
door. What was he doing after all, only coming home 
in obedience to her call. He had delayed about it, 
of course, but now at last it had come, this return in 
filial obedience. Yet was there some kind of flutter in 
his heart, a slight stir of fearful anticipation. He had 
little money in his pocket, and only poor clothes, and 
he had walked from Dublin. His heels had vanished 
even further than their state of disappearance in New 
York. He was aware that he was not returning as his 
mother had seen him in her dreams and endeavoured 
to picture him in her talk by the egg carts at the market 
of Glannidan. . . He who had gone away from the clay 
because that lowly condition was insufficient for him 
was now returning, not altogether fit for the condition 
from which he had so ambitiously removed himself. He 
went up to the door and knocked, just as a stranger 
might have done, instead of walking in with the old 
familiarity. A double reason for this seemed to suddenly 
shape itself in his mind. It was part of the good bearing 
of decency he had learned abroad, and yet in this moment 
it suggested a subtle aspect of the separation from his 
mother. He noticed as she stood in the open doorway 
that she looked out at him even more wistfully than had 
been her custom, and gathered the little black shawl 
depending from her shoulders across her breast with a 
more desolate gesture. 

“Who’s that?” 

“It’s me, mother.” 

“Who are you? Why, I declare it’s Martin! And 
are you back from America? What’s up?” 

He had expected a warmer welcome, and now some of 
the inevitable constraint he had dreaded all the way from 


210 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


Dublin was upon him. He shuffled into the kitchen, and 
immediately his attitude was one of defeat. Life had 
chastened him to a most amazing extent, and as soon 
as he entered he fell beneath the influence of the well- 
known scene. . . But now he felt the presence of the 
new life whose power had already begun to over- 
shadow his own. There was his sister Brigid sitting by 
the fire and dandling a child upon her knee. Here was 
the little life whose coming had shrouded him in gloom 
and had driven him with the impulse of a withering 
fire through his sin. . .Yet, how innocent did it look 
here now dancing upon its mother’s knee and clutching 
with its little fat hands the soft part of her face. And 
his sister Brigid was so completely unmindful of him 
as he came into the kitchen. All her thought and life 
seemed to be for this child of her shame, the creature 
who had so curiously twisted the fortunes of this house. 
She had eyes for no other thing. He was hurt by her 
indifference. She was his sister, and he felt she should 
have some subtle understanding of the pain through 
which he had passed. . . His mother was behaving dif- 
ferently. She was making a cup of tea for him and 
striving to maintain a good show of humour, although, 
in the very anxiety of her effort her real condition was 
becoming more pitifully apparent to Martin. Continu- 
ally she was accompanying her preparations by questions 
as to his way of life since he had left home. The marks 
of success were not upon him, consequently the effort of 
her words was in no way inspiring. Rather did they 
fall, in their quiet commonsense phrasing, upon the 
weak spots of his mind to torture him still further. They 
smote him with a sense of his failure. 

“Musha, d’ye read as much books as ever, Martin?” 


THE MAN 


2 1 1 


“Man alive, Martin, it's you that had the great times 
when you were off play-acting in Dublin. . . Bad cess 
to it, but they often made me laugh when they’d tell 
me about the figarios that you’d have yourself got up 
in. Well, well, whoever would think that you would 
have took such a whim for circus people, for the sorra 
one of my family ever had anything to do with cir- 
cuses.” 

“Musha, and did you not get married the time you 
used to be going about Dublin so much with the ac- 
tressy-looking lassie? Why, anybody that used to be in 
Dublin that time used never be tired telling me of the 
fine figure both of yous used to cut and yous going about 
the street!” 

“And d’ye know what it is, Martin? You’re not 
swanky at all and all the grand life you’re after going 
through and all to that. Just as plain as you were 
the day you left this floor, with no grand clothes on you 
or anything at all. I suppose, don’t you know, that 
you’re after getting a little sense?” 

Thus did she run on as with aching, humbled body 
he sat there on the chair, the hot soles of his boots burn- 
ing his feet. . . When she had ceased, only to go 
on sighing to herself, the burden of the torment was taken 
up by the wailing of the child mingled with Brigid’s 
attempts to comfort it: 

“Hushaby, Austineen; Hushaby, Austineen!” 

He knew that the people of a betrayed girl always 
took a peculiar delight in calling the child, if it were 
a boy, by the name of the girl’s betrayer. Hence the 
Austineen which seemed to connote a continuous be- 
littlement of Austin Fagan. . . Little wonder indeed 
that Jamesey Cassels, fool and all as he was, had 


212 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


gone back to Mucklin and then into the army and later 
out to France, as his mother presently told him. 

His bed of chaff seemed very soft as he laid him 
down. But his weariness did not win him sleep. . . 
Continually there came thronging regrets as to what he 
had done with his life, and there passed before him in 
continual procession the figures which had determined 
the character of his life, his father, Arthur Duignan; 
his mother, his sister, Brigid; Austin Fagan, Father 
Clarke, Peter O’Brien, Mr. Cullen, Mrs. McQuestion, 
Leonard Thompson, and the Tower people; Sean 
O’Hanlon, Ignatius Nolan, Arthur Nicholson, but fore- 
most always and more clearly, Lucy Flynn, the girl in 
Mrs. McQuestion’s, Margaret Murtagh, Ellen O’Connor, 
and Kitty Haymer. . . At the other end of the house 
he could hear the crying of Brigid’s child, the mother 
comforting it, and then his mother talking to her again 
as if they were discussing between them the best method 
of rearing children. Maybe they were comparing his 
babyhood with that of Austineen. . . 

A great deal of the life of the house had hitherto 
centred around his existence, or at least it had appeared 
so to him, but now this other life had begun to oust 
him. The women had concentrated their attention upon 
it and so his vanity had been subjected to an attack 
which was not at all to his liking. He had fallen into 
the habit of being considered somebody, even if only by 
himself, and although this seemed a mean little thing to 
bother about it was something definite which for the 
moment replaced all speculations concerning the life 
through which he had passed. . . At last he fell into 
a heavy slumber. . . 

In the morning he could hear his mother putting 


THE MAN 


213 


down the fire which would prepare the breakfast. 
Then about these poor sounds he began to feel the great 
silence of the fields. For more than a year his ears had 
been filled with the immense sounds of cities and now 
this tremendous lull. . . This was surely the place 
where a man’s sadness might thrive, where a man might 
be crushed by himself down to the nethermost circle of 
his hell. . . Now he could hear voices in the yard just 
beneath his window. It was his mother talking to a 
neighbour who had called for the loan of something. 

“I was thinking it was him we seen passing. He 
had his head down, and you wouldn’t know him from 
Adam.” 

“Aye, he’s home, begad.” 

“Bedambut!” 

“Arrah, musha, Mike, ’tis a poor heart that never re- 
joices, and sure he’s home from America for a bit of 
sport. And mightn’t he as well. Sure, youth is the 
proper season for sport and the like.” 

“Damn its soul, didn’t he grow into the fine big slob 
of a lad? But a bit heavy on his feet, wouldn’t you 
think, and remindful of the Gauger Conroy?” 

Here was a marvellous bit of satirical criticism, and 
Martin felt it as he lay there his mind burning him. 
The Gauger Conroy was an old drunkard of Glannidan. 
He was a man, huge, blasphemous, almost obscene in 
his bigness. He had had a great job in his time, as 
great jobs were understood in Glannidan. Away in 
a big distillery, drinking all day and getting well paid 
for it. Now wasn’t that a great job for any man? 
Then he had come home, a foul-mouthed drunkard, 
and married a young wife. He was always drunk, 
and his habit became so widely known and the 


214 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


fact that sobriety was a condition impossible to him, 
that “as drunk as the gauger” was now a term illustra- 
tive of complete intoxication. 

Here, surely, thought Martin, was an almost un- 
cannily clever attempt to place him. It sent the fire 
surging through his veins. . . Yet he did not feel any 
immediate desire to condemn the people among whom 
he had fallen. It seemed now that his sole desire was 
to lose himself in the immense quietness which flowed 
over the place. To-day he would wander about all 
the old scenes as he had previously wandered about Dub- 
lin and New York, viewing them contemplatively, 
in their literary aspects. But his mind was burning 
to feel the realisation of one spot — the widow Kelly’s. 
He began to think of all the pubs he had seen across 
the world, and he was desirous of here consolidating 
his experience. He remembered it now, but very 
faintly, as some place he had known in a bygone time. 
He thought of it as a place where men had gone with 
their sorrows. . . 

Therefore as soon as his breakfast was over he pre- 
pared to leave the house. Brigid had not yet made her 
appearance out of bed, but just as he was leaving the 
house his mother came to the door and gave him a look 
which was a mixture of pity and anxiety. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, “that I have nothing in the 
house to offer you a treat, and sure a grand, fine-looking 
fellow like you was used to being treated in style and 
you going about with the plays. Here!” 

She handed him half-a-crown, but the situation 
had been so crudely created that it hurt him, yet he 
took the money, for, immediately, he felt that it would 
be sufficient to blot out of his consciousness the hurt 


THE MAN 


2iS 


which that action had created. Down the road he went 
now with that look which he had always associated 
with those who went the roads in the evenings or often 
indeed at mid-day, running for the bare life as it were 
from some sudden torture that had sprung up in the 
fields. Yet the curious conceit he had acquired was 
sustaining him. He was going in search of copy now, an 
author, I thank you, in the making, although still some 
distance from arrival. It would be interesting to watch 
them, he thought, as they sat drinking there. They might 
grow into a common sympathy with the drowning of their 
sorrow. Yet, as in every definite intention of his life, 
was he destined to be frustrated in this, for here was 
Lucy Flynn coming towards him down the road. She 
was swinging a can rather gaily in her hand and singing 
as she came. She had a curious smile playing around 
her lips as she stopped before him. 

“Martin!” she said, simply. 

His voice seemed very uncertain as he replied. Yet 
here surely was Lucy Flynn, of whom he had often 
thought in distant places and under strange circum- 
stances. Now she stood before him. As she laid down 
the can upon the road and folded her arms he took 
notice of their strength. She had not those charms of 
the body which had brought into his life the curse of 
Kitty. . . There was red down upon the arms of Lucy, 
and Kitty’s skin had been so white and smooth. She 
did not know, of course, how well his mother had 
guessed at least one byeway of his degradation. But then, 
immediately, it appeared that Lucy had intuitively seen 
him further buried in his shame. There were ugly 
little wrinkles about her eyes, and it was easy to see 
that she was no longer young. No doubt he had con- 


2l6 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


tributed to the ravages of the years in her case; he had 
marched hand in hand with Father Time. . . For a 
moment it was queer to think that he had not written 
her one single letter. . . 

“I was just going up to your mother with a sup of 
buttermilk. Isn’t it a pity of the world the way the 
second cow is after dying on her, the poor thing? We 
only heard that you were home about twenty minutes 
ago.” 

Here was a curious opportunity for mixture of sen- 
sations. The second cow had died on them, and in the 
natural course of events had he remained here and fallen 
into the ways of those around him he should have gone 
into the widow Kelly’s to exhibit his gloom. Now surely 
was he only about to enjoy the arrears of his gloom. . . 
And here was Lucy to tell him by her presence of all 
she might still be to him, of all she might be to him at 
the present moment even though things had happened 
differently and the second cow had died. Yet here was 
he making for the widow Kelly’s now, while because of 
him and all he had done the summer was beginning to 
fade from her cheek. 

He went on the road towards Glannidan and she con- 
tinued her way towards his mother’s house. No 
doubt she was going there now to condole and to question 
in a friendly way and to show great interest in his 
home coming. 

The village of Glannidan when he entered it seemed 
not less impossible than it had ever been. It now 
appeared a great while since he had been here. When 
he went into the widow Kelly’s the proprietress was 
moving hugely behind the counter, a great bulk of 
pride and flesh. Out of this little hole of a public- 


THE MAN 


217 


house she had made sufficient to farm and fortune all 
her sons and daughters thereby proving to the fullest 
the truth of the old saying that where there was a yard 
of counter well managed it was better than a farm of 
land. She had not known Martin very well, but she 
had seen his father, “Arthur Duignan, the common idiot,” 
spend his life and the most of his farm here by this 
counter. Indeed it was she who had seen and heard 
him, a big, slobbering man, always quoting out of books. 
She detested books, because before all things she was 
a realist and life was the volume that she read. She 
had prospered exceedingly, and no one, not even the 
priest himself, had ever been able to say a word to her. 
She had made the farms and the money for her sons 
and daughters out of the money for gloom and the farms 
that had been drunk here. 


2 l8 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


V 

M ARTIN paid for his drink with the half-crown 
his mother had given him. The widow Kelly was 
not the usual oily, obsequious type of publican. On the 
contrary she made a parade of her boorishness, scarcely 
ever speaking to a customer, but always moving thus 
ponderously and sullenly behind the counter. 

If he had foolishly imagined any sudden comfort 
from the presence of this woman he was immediately 
mistaken. She looked at him with a contempt born of 
a feeling of superiority and spotlessness which had 
arisen out of the stories she had heard of him. A play- 
actor that was what he was, a grand-looking thing indeed 
for any mother’s son to be, a fellow that painted himself 
up and made himself a clown for people to laugh at. 
This while his mother and sister, God help them, through 
his fault and no one’s else, were a laughing-stock in 
the country. And his mother, too, in the face of all 
that to go let on many a time to Glennon, the egg-man, 
that her son, Martin, had a great job away in America. 
Indeed she felt a queer disgust against her customer. 
He had begun by ordering a stylish and literary drink — 
gin and brandy. However, it was not until he had 
ordered a second one that she was moved to speak 
her mind: 

“Gin and brandy, begad, and sure I remember well how 
your poor father, God be good to him, used to be satis- 
fied with a pint of porter. Musha, it’s not everyone can 
afford to take a stylish drink like that.” 

Momentarily he felt a little vexed with himself for 


THE MAN 


219 


being in this place at all. Yet he felt some of his 
acquired personality stir up to assist him as he stood 
here talking to this vulgar woman, something which came 
out of his faculty for literary perception, and which 
in the end might come to his salvation enabling 
him to see things as they really were. Yet it was the 
very littleness of this place which gave it such amazing 
power, and the stillness upon the street which crushed 
his life into a narrow point of vast personal importance. 
Now and again this great stillness was broken by the 
voice of someone speaking outside, and soon men were 
rushing in from their labour, their nailed boots ham- 
mering hard upon the cement floor. They looked dirty 
in their mid-week beards and there was a noisome 
smell of sweat from them. In their midst Martin 
appeared genteel by comparison. His clothes might 
look shabby among the grand surroundings of cities, 
but here he was as one strangely elevated, and this 
was the immediate fact that made them hate him even 
as he stood there. Soon his presence began to be felt, 
that is, to be detested to an even greater degree. Here 
were they only rushing in from their work to get a pint 
for God’s sake, while he could sit here and take it at his 
leisure. This was an immense consideration seeing 
that these men measured the excitement of their lives by 
bouts of drinking and by little snatches of idleness like 
the present. And there was he not even asking them to 
have a drink either, and this was something that 
had always been done by men who had returned from 
America. The fact that he had not got it for himself 
did not immediately appear to them, but merely the 
outward fact that he had it and was too bloody mean to 
share it with them. . . 


220 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


Yet the half-crown his mother had given him was 
bringing Martin rapidly towards a state of exaltation. 
He was beginning to feel the gladness of the bottle; 
soon he was seeing himself as the litterateur, the author 
arrived. Here moving intimately around him, were the 
people whose little lives and little tragedies would make 
him famous. . . The people of his book were very near 
him surely, but he was waiting for some in- 
cident that would concentrate them. He waited 
eagerly until it came. . . He saw Mrs. Kelly climb up 
into the window, where the cobwebbed bottles hid the 
lower portion of the view, and look out upon the street, 
and he saw the crowd in the shop rush to the street 
door to look out. There was a smirk of a grin upon 
the faces of all of them as they returned from their 
gazing, and as she came down, flopping awkwardly from 
the window, to supply them. 

“Fill us another pint, ma’am, if you please!” 

“They’re in town again.” 

“Begad, they are.” 

Then those who through every effort of knavery had 
effected their escape would feel the extent of their es- 
cape. The “grippers” were in Glannidan! The “grippers” 
were in Glannidan! The very first intimation of this 
legal visitation was sufficient to bring them joy. But to 
know with whom they had come to stay was sufficient 
to extend their satisfaction. 

“Be the holy!” or “Be Jaises!” or “Begad!” 
they would ejaculate continuously in the naked gladness 
of their malevolence. These descendants of gallant 
and glorious Irishmen who, in old times, had been the 
sworn enemies of law and order had already regarded 
themselves in sympathy as one man upon the 


THE MAN 


221 


side of the grippers and the peelers against the man 
who had fallen although he had fallen only because he 
had failed to equal or to excel them in “the 
trickery of business” as they politely called it. 
Most of them owed money, and so they were glad 
to see the menace he represented smashed before 
their eyes. They would begin to drink in jubiliation as 
they realised that the gripping process was being pro- 
ceeded with a little way down the street. Begad and 
Bechrist, it was great! It was bloody well right to run 
him out of Glannidan! The curse of hell on him, the 
common robber. 

The unfortunate man was in the very middle of his 
hell in the very middle of Glannidan. The eyes of all 
his neighbours were enjoying the scene which had been 
created. The “grippers” were throwing out his few poor 
sticks of furniture on the road, the few familiar 
utensils which for so many years had cooked the food 
that kept himself and his wife and children alive, even 
the nice big photograph of himself and the wife that 
they had got taken while on their honeymoon in Dublin; 
the grand second-hand piano which he had bought in 
the hey-day of his business and which had served to 
give a sense of comfort and decency to their lives — 
all these intimate, almost living things, were given the 
road amid the cries of the children which mingled 
continuously with the laughter of the others a little 
way up the street. A drunken policeman stood on guard 
at the door of the shop. He owed the man who was 
being “gripped” a considerable sum and had made up 
his mind to steal something before he went off duty at 
the door. . . 

Here all starkly presented was the first clear glimpse 


222 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


that Martin had got of Glannidan in its literary aspect. 
Now Mrs. Kelly left the bar and went into the outer 
shop where Austin Fagan and Brian Doyle had come 
together for a drink. Mrs. Kelly always hung upon their 
words as the finest products of great wisdom. They were 
a couple of young men who had triumphed according 
to the idea of triumph which obtained in Glannidan, two 
“successes” they were. By a curious chance they began 
to talk about America. Neither of them had ever been 
there and the little they had read did not warrant 
them posing as authorities on America. Why had 
the widow Kelly not spoken of America to him? He 
knew, and it was through Austin Fagan indirectly, that 
he had seen and now knew so much about America. . . 
The half-crown was drunk so he staggered out from the 
bar and went home. 


THE MAN 


223 


VI 

H E began to take control of affairs again on the little 
farm in Glannanea, but only in a half-hearted 
sort of way, and only in so far as it was of immediate 
benefit to him. There was a fair about to be held in 
Glannidan so he proposed the sale of a few calves from 
off the field that adjoined that of Lucy Flynn’s father. 
This was the last field in the little holding, and seemed 
to urge, by its very luxuriance, the union for their mu- 
tual benefit of both families. As he looked over the 
little farm he saw with a feeling of rising sadness how 
the stock and the tillage had dwindled. Jamesey Cassels 
had let the land go to hell. Of course the poor fellow 
could scarcely be blamed for he had brought good money 
into the place, but where had it gone? Father Clarke 
knew all about that, and possibly also his first lieutenant, 
Peter O’Brien, the Marquis of Clonlough. He had 
not encountered Father Clarke since he came home, but 
he had seen him pass down the dusty streets of Glan- 
nidan as he stood in the widow Kelly’s. The whole 
business of Martin and his mother and Brigid and 
Austin Fagan and Jamesey Cassels was well hidden in his 
mind. Many such arrangements were well hidden in his 
mind. Martin sometimes imagined him to be seeking 
some distraction from them as he went around Glannidan 
reading his holy book. . . 

And there were things buried in the mind of Martin 
that he could not forget. There was Kitty Haymer, 
for instance. . . So he wanted to be going to the widow 
Kelly’s continually, and it was not a place where one 


224 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


could go without plenty of money. So far he had not 
been able to think of returning to work in the old way. 
The clothes he wore were of a finer texture than those 
Lowry Pigeon, the tailor, had been used to make for 
him. This queer hesitancy which held him suspended 
above endeavour was further symbolised in his memories 
of Kitty, who was set, as in a burning frame, within 
his memory. She was at home in England now, and 
her time had already come and he had not gone to her 
in her need. 

He had come out into the mearing field to have a 
look at the calves he was going to sell at the fair of 
Glannidan, and now he saw Lucy Flynn coming towards 
him from the direction of her father’s field where she 
had been second-moulding potatoes. Considering her 
occupation she was dressed neatly enough and her 
white apron was in artistic contrast to the green 
fields. Yet did she look coarse and strong, and as she 
showed her big white teeth in a smile there 
was something that pained him in the thought of Kitty 
which she brought to his mind. As his eyes fell to the 
earth with the depression of his thought he caught sight 
of her great brogues, and he remembered all the dainti- 
ness of Kitty. . . 

Immediately was she talking of the crops and the 
land, deploring the disaster that his brother-inlaw, 
Jamesey Cassels, the dirty idiot, had brought upon the 
nice, tidy fields. Her talk was almost comforting in 
the commonsense it exhibited. In a few moments it 
drew him back from the dark period of his life and he 
was at home again in the quiet evenings before the little 
tragedy in his own home had driven him into the 


THE MAN 


225 


strange byeways of life through which he had passed. 
Around them stretched all the fields both knew and 
all the homesteads of the boreens. It was upon such 
scenes that his eyes had dwelt in peace before his mind 
had finally turned into the great ways of thought and 
upon them fell now an immense peace as they viewed the 
olden, quiet place and listened to the happy, quiet sounds. 

As he turned to look at her where they sat side by 
side he saw that she was gazing wistfully away over 
the fields as if in quest of some little portion of the 
happiness that had been denied her. He saw that she 
had grown a little older, at least she was not as young 
as the Kitty he constantly remembered. The clay and 
strong air and sunshine of the fields had left their mark 
upon her surely. Suddenly she spoke: 

“I’m sorry for you, Martin; sorry that you have not 
made better use of your time. Sorry that you do be 
giving them the chance to talk about you the way 
they do.” 

Her words fell upon his mind with an even throbbing 
insistence and there sprang into his consciousness a 
sudden feeling of immense shame. He felt very well that 
she was speaking out of the great regard for him which 
had survived his early unfaithfulness. 

“They’re talking of you, Martin; they’re talking of 
you, night, noon and morning. They’re saying awful 
things about you. Nothing is too bad for them to say 
and it hurts me. My God, it hurts me! And it’s putting 
between us, too. You know my father wasn’t a lover 
of yours at any time, and you might say he’s not a 
lover of yours now in any case!” 

In these moments suddenly was being reborn his 
early love for Lucy, and now were sweeping over 


226 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


him also the withering blasts of his punishment. Yet 
was the clay continually drawing them nearer. They 
were kissing now, great silent, blind kisses, the tears 
filling up their eyes. She was in his arms now, and all 
the appearance of strength and coarseness had gone 
from her. She was to him now even as Kitty had been. 
Long ago she had struggled out of his arms as he tried 
to kiss her, but now there was no struggle, not even the 
smallest attempt at refusal. Even until the present 
moment had she been puzzled to know what it was 
that had driven him away from her. Maybe it was 
that he had not seen. . . So there was upon her now 
a very tremendous ecstasy of revealment. Through the 
disturbing talk of the neighbours he might slip further 
and further away from her. . . But he would know 
now, and he would surely triumph over the life around 
him for her sake. 

As they remained talking there a fuller depression 
settled down upon them. The point of all her words 
seemed curiously concentrated upon the thing that was 
himself and his talks with Kitty had been mostly of 
art and love and beauty. Now he was being forced to 
talk of things so near the clay. . . He was more distant 
from his curve of glory than he had ever been before. 
She had set her eye upon him for a husband and there 
seemed to be no denying her desire. Momentarily he 
remembered Barney Shaw’s play of Man and Superman , 
which he had seen in Dublin. She must have 
caused Masses to be said for his safe return and made 
Novenas for the success of her intentions. And what 
a Godsend it must have been to her when he came 
rambling home. She was just beginning to show her 
age, and soon people would be saying that she had not 


THE MAN 


227 

been able to keep her man. He might not be much of 
a man, for already her curious pride in him was fading 
further. But the blame would be put on her. Why 
hadn’t she kept him? Now she must keep him to her- 
self. She must hold and encourage him, even unto the 
ignominy of this surrender. . .Yet even now was she 
curiously ashamed. . .To think of all the years she 
had so modestly waited; waited, too, with such an 
amount of noble, although neglected affection, only to 
be betrayed at last by her love into this moment of 
madness. . . And he, too, was ashamed. . . Frequently 
even in his uttermost degradation, he had thought of her 
in a pure, tender way, and, strange as it might seem, 
even towards more complete perfection of regard since 
his return to the quiet life of the boreens. Now he had 
desecrated even the possible holiness of this thought. 
. . . Suddenly they found themselves moving hur- 
riedly away from one another. He ran down thorny 
byways on his way to Glannidan for a few drinks before 
closing time. 


22 $ 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


VII 

E VEN in spite of the frequent joy of such meetings 
he knew little peace. The widow Kelly’s seemed 
to call him with a louder and more clear call. Always, 
in the evenings, between the conspiracy of his own mind 
with the silence of the fields he could hear the lapping 
of low, mournful sounds about his soul. He wore a 
forlorn look always like that of a spoiled priest although 
he was merely a spoiled pagan. 

Often he came into the widow Kelly’s at that quiet 
hour of the evening before the usual drunkards had 
assembled for their nightly carouse. He would stand 
there by the counter behind his drink listening to the 
small noises which at long intervals disturbed the street. 
In such deserted places one’s ears attain to perfect 
acquaintanceship with the smallest sound so, although 
the cobwebbed bottles in the window hid his view, he 
recognised all the people who passed in the varying 
noises of their footsteps. . . These seemed to carry to 
his imagination full realisation of what the passers by 
had on their tongues and in the abysmal depths of their 
mean minds. Hard words of him, no doubt, always 
and always. 

“He’s drunk this evening again!” “Arrah, musha, sure 
he was blind, stinking drunk all day!” “Begad he’s a 
rare one for the drop!” “He won’t be long drinking out 
the little place entirely on the mother and sister.” “Oh, 
the son of Arthur Duignan, don’t you know, and what 
else could he be?” 

And so as he stood there by the widow Kelly’s little 


THE MAN 


229 


counter he always knew full well the things that were 
being said of him. That they were in the main true 
seemed to be the strangest thing about them, for he 
was still a young handsome man showing all the marks 
of that individuality which had lifted him, even for a 
short while, beyond the clay. But this was the in- 
evitable punishment for endeavouring to place himself 
apart from the peasant and was, on the part of the 
others, the method of attack always found most effective 
in dealing with such cases. And the feeling of an- 
tagonism thus brought to life had grown and grown 
until now it was a big thing threatening the whole fabric 
of his existence. Foolishly he had tried to flout it, 
doing by way of defiance the very things for which he 
had fiercely incurred their dislike. Yet even because 
of this had he given them ever increasing opportunities 
of besmirching him. And now was he beginning to feel 
that the wagging tongues had in a way defeated 
him. He had grown fond of drink. This dirty 
pub in Glannidan had become the scene of his recre- 
ation, the place of respite from the onslaughts of the 
hatred opposed to him, yet in this place was he continu- 
ally betraying himself. 

It was the most important place of degradation in 
Glannidan, but behind its bold and imposing front 
was another house which but thinly hid the gloom of 
death. This house was inhabited by the sad ghosts 
of the men who had here drunk themselves to death. 
There were many nights when it seemed that the two 
houses became merged in one another. Among the 
frequenters of the bar one could almost fancy the 
dead still moving. And when the drunken laughter 
rang out clear and disgusting one could almost detect 


230 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


other laughter behind it which seemed always of a 
sudden to give it another echo and another sound. 
This was the laughter of the lost and dead men. 

Away from those who came here for absolutely no 
other purpose but drink was another crowd of evening 
visitors who stood apart in the better portion of the pub. 
It was made up, for the most part, of Austin Fagan, 
Brian Doyle, his inseparable counterpart, a district coun- 
cillor or two, the architect to the District Council, 
the schoolmaster. Martin was always forced to hear 
them begin their usual evening chat — the talk of Glan- 
nidan, that mean and hurtful gossip which to them 
appeared eternally interesting. Listening to the bitter 
things they said of one another one might be inclined 
to think that they were segregated as enemies from the 
community and banded together in the firm friendship 
of one another. However, this illusion was quickly 
dispelled when any of them dropped away from the 
group and went out of the shop. It was then that the 
moment became propitious for a new object of attack. 
The character of the person just gone from their com- 
pany was laid pitilessly bare, and no matter in what 
high air of calumny the others happened to be soaring 
they at once alighted to this new feast like flies upon 
a festering sore. It was a good illustration of their liking 
for one another, and showed upon what manner of 
foundation their friendship was laid. They were 
merely the head pismires of Glannidan who were 
always full of the desire to sting one another even 
while continuously and collectively desirous of stinging 
someone else. 

As Martin listened to them his mind was always filled 
with anger and disgust. But why did he come here 


THE MAN 


231 

to this place at all; why was he allowing himself to be 
dragged further and further into the slough of Glanni- 
dan? But he might as well have asked himself why 
did Gillachrist McBrady, who was writing a great novel 
in Irish, stop in a doss-house on the south side of Dublin? 
All the clear issue that ever came of his torturing 
questioning was the fact that he always emerged at 
ten sodden, oblivious, drunk, blind to the ugliness of 
Glannidan as to the beauty of the world, letting talk 
out of his mouth which was in keeping with the codes 
of the village. 

Lucy had become angry with him for his continual 
surrender to the villainy of the village, particularly seeing 
that she had surrendered herself to him. But there were 
times, during the long day in the fields, when she began 
to fear the very splendour of her intentions and to grow 
despondent. But it would be grand to snatch him, still 
clean to her seeming, even although the net had begun 
to settle around him. 

One Sunday she met him on the walk that led around 
by Murray Hall, which was the promenade of Glannidan. 
It was on Sunday that all about this place a perfect orgy 
of scandal reigned high over all thought of God. . . 
But as they sat at the foot of a tree looking towards 
where the afternoon sunlight made golden the windows 
of Murray Hall they were drawn at length to talk of the 
ways of Glannidan. Lucy hung her head after the way 
of one who has herself been hurt when she repeated 
the hard words that had been said of him one night in 
the widow Kelly’s. But never had any even imagined 
words against himself brought him such a feeling of 
punishment as those which now fell from her lips. 
They debased him before his own eyes and he grew 


232 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


sorry for his soul. He felt that some of the great pride 
of his manhood must have fallen away from him when 
he gave people the continual opportunity to speak of 
him thus. Their talk and the feeling that overhung it 
seemed to invade his very heart. . . Long after she had 
slipped away, for fear of her father being told 
of their walk together round the Hall, he remained 
there in gloomy reverie. He had wandered away down 
the avenue which led from Murray Hall, and again he 
was in the country of the boreens and very near to the 
churchyard of Kilkenna. He leaned across the 
wall and remained there gazing out for hours over 
the ridges of quiet graves in what he liked to call “the 
meadow of the dead.” This little graveyard had always 
been a subtle aid to memory. Long ago it had helped 
him to recollect a line from literature, and now it caused 
to spring into his mind queer thoughts of many things, 
the tragedy of continual, aching separation, because it 
seemed he must have always two separations in his life 
and from two women at one time. Now he was far away 
from either Kitty Haymer or Ellen O’Connor, 
and often in the vacant spaces of America there had 
appeared such a great distance between him and his 
mother and Lucy Flynn. He was coming to remember, 
too, the burials, not of dead kinsmen, but of the burials 
that had taken place within himself, of vanished pieties 
and dead ambitions. . . 

And now as he stood here in meditation he thought 
that at last he had seen the meaning of life very vague 
and vapoury within this sanctuary of peaceful bones. 
He had been a long time straining his eyes and his mind 
as it were to pierce this vision, but the lords of life and 
death had resolutely shut him out from the wisdom of 


THE MAN 


2 33 


such a glimpse. . . As he had looked towards death 
for enlightenment upon the meaning of life, so did he 
now, as he went down the road, look towards life for 
some clear knowledge of death. . . A drift of little 
girls were coming down the road in their clean Sunday 
pinafores. Their simple frocks were white and pretty 
and their faces shone with * innocence in the sun. 
They laughed up into his face as they went by. He 
had a sudden thought of them flowering into woman- 
hood. He fancied some man, might it not be himself, 
coming to love one of these children grown. . . “Musha, 
sure, a man can marry at any time but a poor girl, God 
help us” — Lucy had said more than once since his 
return. 

But beyond such a momentary flash of deeper specu- 
lation the thought of Lucy would be for ever filling his 
mind. The awakening of her passion and his glimpse 
of her tremendous regard for him had somehow snatched 
his heart from desolation. These were the feelings 
which would mark his approach to her, a generous 
breath of sympathy with the small compass of her mind, 
a fine tenderness melting and blinding him. But when 
they were together it was the springing of the same old 
darkness into his mind. He was seeing Kitty as a 
shadowy figure rising up between them as of old he had 
seen Lucy when Kitty had been with him. Yet had the 
great love of Lucy begun to unite them closely and they 
were together every evening of their lives. . . 

Even still the aspect of homecoming had not been 
put away from him. Every evening when he left Lucy 
he went into Glannidan as seemed quite natural, because 
every Yankee that ever lived had always done it. 
A certain amount of his original gift of observation 


234 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


had been blotted out by his dreaming, and he was un- 
able to see that in selling some of his sheep and calves 
on returning to the management of his father’s farm 
he merely showed that he had returned to drink it, 
even as his father had done his best to drink it in the 
years gone by. 

Therefore a most remarkable thing was happening. 
Glannidan was rapidly coming into some triumph over 
him and compelling him to conform to its own ideas 
of greatness. For generations it had been an unalter- 
able convention that a man home from America should 
march proudly into the pub and stand a drink to every 
spitting idler who might be there. From failing to realise 
this on the first day he had come to the widow 
Kelly’s he had now come to have a certain cowering in 
his heart compelling him to feel that he must do it, 
even while he half felt that they were laughing at him 
all the time. 

The widow Kelly could only barely hide her huge dis- 
gust of him. 

“The mouth,” she used to say, “but sure he’s his 
father’s son.” 

Then there was the walk home to the boreens every 
evening with a crowd sometimes shouting and singing, 
every man of them in sane interludes, especially those 
who had claims to be considered “Yanks” themselves, 
having spent some time in America, finding out the places 
he had been, the streets, in fact sometimes the very 
houses. In describing a scene or an incident when he 
would quite casually mention the name of a street they 
would break in on his talk. 

“Ah, sure that’s a street where there’s a lot of ‘bad’ 
houses,” they would say in the most casual manner 


THE MAN 


235 

possible, and then as soon as he parted company with 
them would stop to wonder to one another about the 
queer places that Martin Duignan knew in America. 

The hours of the day he was forced to spend in the 
house were a particular torture. There was a curious 
feeling of restraint or reserve between him and his 
mother which lashed both of them into the very froths 
of torment. Often they would not speak for days and 
a wide flame of bitterness would be burning between 
them. Her face would grow gradually whiter beneath 
the strain of it and not a word would they speak to one 
another. She knew and felt her responsibility for his 
present condition. Her ambitious notions for Brigid had 
resulted merely in the fact that he had been replaced by 
this other life which crawled and shouted on the floor 
before his eyes. 

More often than seemed absolutely necessary in the in- 
terests of cleanliness the little naked body would be 
stripped for his enjoyment as it were. The subtle, quiet 
enmity which had again sprung into being between Brigid 
and himself had now relapsed into silence. But it was 
this continual parading of the child that got on his 
nerves and drove him from the house in the evenings. 
And where he always went was to Lucy Flynn. This 
was another cause of his mother’s grief, for right well 
did she know where he was always going. It annoyed 
her more than anything else to see him slipping back 
from the grand ways of life thus far. And then at those 
times when he spoke to his mother, always something 
would be let fall in the conversation, always something 
would suddenly attack his mind twisting it into a greater 
fury than heretofore. She had love for him surely, 
and as her son he flashed back some of that love; but 


236 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


it was beyond her to understand the moulding of his 
mind. To her he appeared as a good-for-nothing and 
no more. All that he had passed through was not to 
her way of thinking an adventure of the soul but merely 
so much blackguardism. A book she had never read in 
her life, so it was quite impossible for her to see the enor- 
mous importance with which Martin looked upon books. 

“Why you’d think I was a tramp the way I’m looked 
down upon in this house!” he said angrily, one morning. 

“And what else are you, I’d like to know? You have 
no job and no clothes, and only whatever money in your 
pocket belongs by right to me and your sister and the 
little child. Musha, sure, ’tis only making a show of us 
before the people of Glannidan you are. Sure if 
you’re so mad and all that on books and writ- 
ing, sure can’t you go in properly for writing for the 
Ballycullen Gazette like Brian Doyle. Indeed you might 
say that he’s a success as a writer.” 

This seemed the very unkindest cut, this putting of 
him on the same level with one for whose abilities and 
character he had the most complete contempt. Brian 
Doyle might be considered a success, as success was un- 
derstood in Glannidan, but his idea of success was a 
lamp of the intellect that shone out over the world. 
It was a portion of the bright dream that had come into 
his mind for love of Ellen. For Ellen! The very 
thought appeared as a blasphemy and a betrayal. 
Poor Ellen O’Connor! What had he done for her 
since they had drifted apart — nothing, less than nothing. 
He had degraded her memory in ten thousand ways. 
He had betrayed her. Maybe she was searching for 
him in America, battling with poverty and mean ways 
in the endless hope of love and all for sake of him who 


THE MAN 


237 

was so supremely unworthy, a coward who after every 
effort to ruin his life had crept home here to bring more 
sorrow to the heart of his mother. 

Through such little conflicts with the harshness of 
life, the crude world around him, there came very 
gradually into his mind the first realities of his great 
ambition. But they came in their full immensity one 
evening as he sat, his elbows on his knees and a pint 
in his hand, in the widow Kelly’s. Around him were 
the louts of the parish, and he was entering into their 
gibes and their talk. Here were men with neither minds 
nor thought beyond the comfort of the pints in their 
hands — their Unholy Grail whose quest was the grey ad- 
venture of their lives. 

In “The Daffodils” it had been different; even in 
America the gold that Arthur Nicholson had seen in him 
had been the means of plucking him from the furnace. 
But here he had allowed himself to be reduced to the 
level of those around him. Not many signs of success 
about him surely. And always, as he sat here, he could 
hear the sound of men of success outside in the other 
apartment of the shop. Whenever a loud guffaw 
rang in as far as where he sat he would feel that 
it was at him they were laughing. The whole 
attitude of Glannidan towards him was a gigantic 
sneer. And always he saw Austin Fagan as the head 
and front of that sneer. Why was it that he had not 
wreaked just vengeance upon that cur? It must be that 
he had accepted his fate as part of the punishment he 
so richly deserved for his treatment of Kitty. He had 
taken it in a mood of Christian acceptance, he who had 
done his best to make himself a pagan and yet it had 
only brought him to this. . . 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


238 

To pluck success out of the depths to which he 
had descended would be the best revenge upon the 
forces which had conspired so resolutely to de- 
stroy his life. Suddenly this seemed to be the moment 
for which all his life had waited. All his years had 
moved blindly as it were to this ecstasy, but now it leaped 
and surged brightly about him. It was an immense idea 
surely, and it had been forced upon his commonsense 
by the life he must express in terms of literature. To 
make use of the people he best knew for this purpose, 
all those who had crushed him towards his punishment 
showing always so darkly contrasted with those who in 
odd moments had lit his life. . . He suddenly remem- 
bered, with a more insistent clearness, how every- 
one of them bought the Ballycullen Gazette to gloat 
over any piece of unfortunate connection with the law 
reported, even most illiterately, by Brian Doyle. It now 
appeared predestined that it was Martin Duignan 
and not Brian Doyle who was to give them a great read 
some day. . . 

It was strange that the dream which had been evoked 
by Ellen in places of light and beauty should move 
towards realisation through the dirty darkness of the 
lowest aspect of Glannidan. The character of his 
resolve, too, was not entirely unrelated to the malignity 
and spitefulness of those who sprang from the clay. 
His dream had only been a dream after all. In itself 
it may have been noble, but it had raised up no nobility 
in him. Now it appeared to him that all achievement 
is essentially of the clay and that he was seeing 
his way, after such a long spell of blindness, to begin 
his life’s work at the point from which all his personality 
should have begun to shape itself from the very first. 


THE MAN 


239 


VIII 

S O all through the long evenings of the winter he 
laboured, and far into the night, when it lay very 
thick upon Glannidan and the boreens around Glan- 
anea, and upon the bog stretching far away to Bally- 
cullen. Here in the room where his dead father 
had brought all the books from the quays in Dublin, 
and heedless of the crying of Brigid’s child, he would 
remain working and laughing queerly to himself as 
he worked. Sometimes there would spring up before him 
odd little sketches which he could not possibly embody 
in his malignant story. These he made into short 
stories which he sent to the papers and magazines. 
After a little delay some of these came to be published, 
and with the first cheques he had bought good clothes 
which put him on a decent footing in Glannidan. He 
did not attempt to imitate the foppishness of Austin 
Fagan and Brian Doyle, yet was this effort of his 
suddenly putting him on a level with them. This the 
people of Glannidan would not have minded in the 
least, but a curious side of him remained which they 
could not understand. He was a queer character 
anyway. Here now stories by him were being printed 
in papers a thousand times more important than the 
Garradrimna Guardian or even the Ballycullen Gazette , 
yet it was in the public bar of the widow Kelly’s that 
he still chose to take his pleasure. When Austin Fagan 
or Brian Doyle drank it was in secret in some of the 
remote and hidden places of the widow Kelly’s, but there 
he would be, the first man in Glannidan whose 


240 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


name had ever appeared over a story in a paper, standing 
against the counter as of old he had stood in “The 
Daffodils,” not now, however, with kindred spirits but 
with damnable fools who talked continually of cattle 
and the crops. Then, too, on days when the enmity 
between his mother and sister and the torture of the 
child would be too great he would come in here meeting 
possibly some man who had come to drown his sorrow, 
some “curse of God annoyance” that had sprung out 
of his bit of land. They would remain here until the 
night had fallen thick over Glannidan and until the con- 
dition of his mind prevented him from even 
finding copy for his book. . . His mood would relapse 
into a conflict between gloom and brightness, between 
his last thoughts of Kitty and the dream of sometime 
meeting Ellen again. . . But already had he begun to 
forget both in reality for the delicacy had fallen from 
many sides of his mind. . . Very often he would find 
himself entering into the sullen blasphemy of the men 
with whom he was after spending the long hours. 
Then he would fall into one of those conditions of 
vacancy when all the world would seem to slope away 
from his feet. . . Sometimes the effect of the drink 
would help him to doze off, and the life that sloped 
away from the widow Kelly’s would swim far beyond 
him. He would have a faint notion that people were 
coming up to the door to have a look at him, the author, 
begad, the man who was writing stories in the papers 
about Glannidan! But what about his own story? 
That was a grand one surely. What a lovely character 
he was! They loved to read him at this moment 
with a terrible enmity stirring their minds. He wanted 
to raise himself beyond them, but, thanks be to God, 


THE MAN 


241 


his father’s love for drink was in him, too, and they 
depended on that to finish him. Thus had he made 
his purpose in coming to the widow Kelly’s twofold, one 
side threatening gradually to subjugate the other down 
into a low byeway of destruction. 

He had an awakening one evening as he Sat, alone 
in the bar, in a condition of semi-stupor with all his 
dreams of life and longing going from him. He saw the 
sergeant of Glannidan, Sergeant O’Donoghue, steal 
into the bar and slip a bottle of port wine from a shelf 
for his drunken wife, and put it away beneath his tunic. 
Then taking another bottle from the shelf he stole 
over and put it into Martin’s pocket who feigned 

greater stupor so that he might observe the 
action, but directly the sergeant had left the bar he 
was as sober as ever he had been. . . He quickly re- 
placed the bottle on the shelf as his mind leapt into 
a perfect flame. Here was a plot to degrade him 

utterly from which he had been just barely saved by 
the grace of God. He had only made slight mention 
of O’Donoghue’s propensities in a little sketch, and he 
saw very clearly now why this determined attempt had 
been made to bring him down. What would the others 
do if only they knew what use he had made of them? 
Why they would murder him. Now the widow Kelly 

came back into the bar, followed by the sergeant who 

called for a pint quite casually. 

“Gimme a pint, ma’am,” he said, “and good evening, 
Martin! Good evening, Martin! How are ye, Martin?” 

“Good evening, O’Donohue,” replied Martin. 

The salutation on both sides displayed an amazing 
familiarity. O’Donoghue had been accustomed to 


242 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


have himself addressed as “Sergeant,” “Sir,” “Your 
Honour,” etc., etc., and this sudden “O’Donoghue” 
of Martin was startling. Also it betrayed sobriety. 
Martin’s eyes, too, were upon the bulge beneath 
his tunic, which was the bottle of port wine he was 
stealing from the widow Kelly. His own eyes glanced 
hurriedly at the shelf above his head. The other bottle 
had been replaced there. Mrs. Kelly waddled out of 
the bar. 

“Damn it!” he said, sidling up to Martin. “I only 
did it for the cod — your bottle, I mean. I want this 
for the wife. She’s after having a kid and I can’t 
afford delicacies. Of course you won’t say a bloody word. 
What’ll you have?” 

“Get away, you swine, before I lay hands on you!” 
. . . Great Christ! Where had he fallen at all? Among 
drunkards, liars, thieves, adulterers, hypocrites. It 
seenied as if all their villainy had been concentrated 
into this attempt to besmirch him. . . 

He went on feverishly with the writing of his book. 
All the little turn of nobility it might have betrayed had 
suddenly become warped in him. It would be a hideous 
book now, telling of the ghoulishness of that Ireland 
whose reality was being forced upon him. Through its very 
bitterness might it become great and upon its greatness 
should he arise. . . He had thoughts now that did not seem 
altogether dreams of becoming the great Irish novelist. 
The Dostoevsky of Ireland, the man for whom his country 
had waited since William Carleton, and of whom Carleton 
had written prophetically in his autobiography. Synge, 
Moore, Joyce, Colum, Stephens, Ervine, Robinson — he 
thought of the best men of his day who had made his 


THE MAN 


243 


countrymen characters of fiction and drama. He had read 
all of them, but somehow he felt that his was a more 
stark presentation. He fully realised the mistake that all 
of them had made. They had all attempted to express 
the Irish peasant through the medium of his talk, in 
what he said rather than in what he did. In fact, not 
one of them seemed able to realise what he was capable 
of doing, for although calling themselves artists they, not 
so very distantly, resembled porters of an Irish Nation- 
alist newspaper setting down the flamboyant periods of 
some successful patriot. They seemed to fondly fancy 
that they had broken away from all conventions, when 
as a matter of fact they were hedged in by the most 
tyrannical convention in Ireland. They moved always 
in their pages within the shadow of the Moloch to whom 
their books were as children of sacrifice. The language 
obsession of the Gaelic League was merely a perfect 
concentrated expression of the same fallacy, for here was 
an organised attempt to give language an importance 
greater than the life for which, at the fullest stage of its 
development, it could never be more than an ornament. 
The national self-respect had dwindled for the very same 
reason. It was always the speechifying about it and 
not the progress that was made which seemed to matter. 
In this newer Irish literature, too, it was the power of 
prate which successfully hid the power of the clay. It 
was a perverse subjugation, and the full reason why it 
had failed to react upon Irish life towards any good 
purpose. And so the Russian-Irish realist who would 
scourge his countrymen into a clear view of themselves 
had not yet emerged. 

There were moments when he almost failed before 
the might of his task and collapsed into despair. He 


244 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


never went towards Glannidan now, and those hours of 
the evening when he rested from writing he spent with 
Lucy Flynn, but not a word or a thought had she in 
common with him, and even Kitty had not been blind 
to the beauties of literature. His book, he knew, would 
bring him much fame and some money, but it was not 
likely to bring him any happiness, not now, anyhow, 
when he had begun to make a second Kitty of Lucy 
Flynn. 

And where was Ellen? Ellen would understand the 
present splendour of his mind; Ellen who had fanned 
his mind during the queer days of “The Daffodils” and 
the Tower. And so he was amazed to think that, even 
with this tremendous return of power and beauty to his 
mind, Ellen had slipped still further out of his affec- 
tionate recollection. With the coming of spring his book 
was approaching completion. But the land, too, was 
calling, and the ancient impulses of the clay had returned 
to him so strongly that he could not resist. It was on 
their cattle that the curse in their case had turned, and 
so they had the horses still. 

In the days before he had taken again to the land they 
seemed to be inviting him continually with their big, soft 
eyes. So now he was out and ploughing daily. He was 
throwing his whole strength into an attempt to bring 
back to the little holding that look of glad prosperity 
he had put upon it after the death of his father. Yet 
curiously enough this caused a new annoyance to his 
mother. She had considered his literary effort an attempt 
to emulate such successful young men as Austin Fagan 
and Brian Doyle, and it pleased the turn of vanity in 
her which had been sadly disappointed by Brigid. 

“I suppose the writing didn't turn out much of a 


THE MAN 


245 


success, Martin?” she said to him one evening as he 
came in with a dejected attitude from the ploughing. He 
did not answer. He was doing this for love of them, 
even as he had done many a thing for his mother and 
Brigid and little Austineen, and yet they were unable 
to see it. . . The extraordinary vanity of his mother 
had survived her afflictions. He saw daily how Brigid 
had overreached her ambition and was sitting there very 
quietly amid the ruins of her beauty. The helplessness 
of little Austineen seemed to symbolise the helplessness 
of all three. 

Often as he worked now in the tillage field old Henry 
Flynn would come over to the mearing wall and look 
out at him in curiosity not unmixed with a certain crude 
admiration. Damn it! wasn’t Martin Duignan working 
well, begad, after all the time he had wasted in the 
bloody cities. He was mending to a degree most extraor- 
dinary to imagine. He did not put forward any objec- 
tions to Lucy keeping company with him now since he 
was after giving up going into Glannidan in the day- 
time. And Lucy was proud now with a noble pride. She 
had plucked her man from his idleness* and surely that 
was a great thing to have done. 

They were to be married in the following harvest. 
It seemed that even in this he had bowed obediently 
to all the things that life had wished to do with him 
from the beginning. In queer, lucid moments of his 
curious morality he felt it was something he must do 
in atonement for his connection With Kitty. . .Yet 
it was the thought of Ellen that would seem to hold his 
mind always from the perfect resignation of one resolve. 
It would be hard to think of himself settled so quietly 
here, married to Lucy Flynn, and doing the work of the 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


246 

two farms, doing all that heavy, animal work which 
seemed part of his gloomy duty while the tremendous 
account which had sprung from the immortal part of 
him would be ringing his name around the world. Arthur 
Nicholson would not regret the hand he had had in it. 
There would be a stirring of admiration at the 
Tower and of envy in “The Daffodils” when 
they would read it in either of those places. . . Again 
he could hear them talking of him around the tea table 
in the great room, and Mr. Leonard Thompson’s quiet, 
queer laugh, as he sat smoking in the biggest armchair, 
his long legs sprawled between the others and the gas 
stove. . . “A putrid book,” he could hear Phelim 
O’Brien say in “The Daffodils,” while the others showed 
their enjoyment of this opinion around the greasy 
tables, a certain young man from the south hitting 
his knee continually as he endorsed the opinion of his 
master — “Like nothing so much as a bloody big field, 
all weeds and thistles and dirt, where a fellow would 
want to go out with a bloody big scythe and slash 
around him before the damn thing would be even bear- 
able to walk through.” 

Ellen might read it and even Kitty. . . Yet 
his dream seemed suddenly to have been changed by this 
reality. The book had been accepted by a London 
firm and would be published in the autumn. 


247 


THE MAN 


IX 

F AR into the spring was Martin’s peace returning 
to him with sweet additions daily. He had 
brought the land back to its original beauty, and he 
had brought himself back to the early beauty of his mind 
in the great days of Ellen. And it was the clay that had 
wrought this wonder. It was a queer, great thing for him 
who in his early days had not got a great deal of school- 
ing to have caught so much of the world into his mind 
as to be able to write a book about it, a book, too, which, 
in a way, might prove to be his vindication and help 
to put him finally in the imagination of those from whom 
he had sprung as a “damn smart fellow entirely.” And 
in Dublin, too, some of the clever critics might be at 
their wits’ end to know what to write of him. 

It was to be in another way the justification of his 
dead father, too, and the deadly accusation of the one 
who had brought ruin to his sister. Yet was it a curious 
kind of revenge. . . He often fancied how people must 
think he should go up to Austin Fagan and strike him 
publicly between the two eyes. Perhaps this was what 
even Brigid herself thought, and her feeling of it the 
cause of the dark reserve between them even when the 
eyes of both were held by the laughing spell of the little 
child. . .Yet, for all the almost insane subtlety which 
marked it, they would be able to appreciate it in Glan- 
nidan for they were all woefully fond of reading the 
Ballycullen Gazette , and, strange as it might seem, it 
was the crude scurrility of its method that had shown 
him a definite way of turning his dream into reality. 


248 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

Suddenly he made a discovery which amazed him. 
In the long, quiet evenings towards the end of the 
spring it was his custom to come out to the road gate 
and lean upon it in a way which led him into curious 
twists of thought which were different in their turnings 
from the tortuous, urgent life through which he had 
passed. He felt the enormously introspective turn of 
his nature. It was upon himself that all the urging 
of his mind had turned. He appeared wholly unable 
to escape from himself even in the whirling disintegration 
of the present when the thoughts of mankind seemed 
only to be for blood and war. He was not even thinking 
of Ireland, yet was he aware that at this very moment 
men were dedicating illustrious lives to the service of 
Ireland. 

It was a strange thing, too, this love of Ireland. 
How it gathered up the whole being of a man into its 
white consuming flame. It had caught up Sean 
O’Hanlon, and he was part of the warlike urge of the 
moment for love of Ireland. If he had gone this way 
with Sean he must ere now have been filled by 
the beauty of the flame, and be preparing to die 
for Ireland. There was not much, he often thought, 
that Ireland had shown him worth dying for, with the 
possible exception of Ellen. It was queer how he would 
think of her so insistently in the light of men dying for 
the Kathleen-ni-Houlihan of Yeats’s play. But he had 
merely filled his life with mud for the purpose of writing 
a muddy book in which he would show men who had 
sprung from the same clay as himself, crawling about 
dark places which were filled With a heavy stench of 
the soul. 

Yet the personal reason would survive past all the 


THE MAN 


249 


battle of the ideal for its natural place in his conscious- 
ness. He was at enmity and must ever be at enmity 
with those people of the clay, because of the certain 
turn of genius that had been implanted in him. But 
there were men of genius among the Irish Volunteers, and 
yet they thought their lives very little to give for Ireland. 

But, continually as he leaned over the road gate, 
men with this little twist in their minds and with that 
would go trooping towards Glannidan with heads 
downcast. There was little thought of Ireland in their 
thick skulls. As he remained longer and longer thinking 
here in the evenings he saw less and less of Lucy Flynn, 
although what was between them had resolved itself into 
a condition of acceptance so far as the neighbours 
were concerned. In the certainty she represented she 
remained the “Ann Whitfield” of his life. Yet were 
there odd, bright moments in his thought of Ellen when 
he wondered had the clay caught him finally to 
its breast. . . 

Two remarkable things happened at Easter, 1916 — 
he wrote a letter, which in some undreamt of way he 
hoped would reach Ellen, and the Easter Rising broke 
out in Dublin. There came upon him an almost un- 
accountable madness when he realised that men were 
dying in Dublin, dying for love of him and all their 
countrymen. He knew the very men they must be and 
Sean O’Hanlon would be fighting not far from them. 
. . . There came upon him a real and bitter regret that 
he was not there. He went everywhere in these days 
among the people for whom those men had gone out to 
lay down their lives, everywhere he went in the hope of 
hearing one good word of them. But not one. What he 
heard merely fed his rage. 


250 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


As was most meet, it was in the forge, the Parliament 
of Glannidan, that he heard the most bitter things. 
Said an ancient who used to tell frequent lies of having 
been out in “ ’67.” 

“And would you tell me now, or d’ye know how these 
damn Sinn Feiners got into Ireland?” 

He seemed to think, “ould pathriot” though he was, 
that they were a savage tribe from the heart of Africa 
that had somehow remained over from the Exhibition, 
the time it was in Dublin, in 1907. 

The publicans of Glannidan, the men who throve upon 
this degradation to the depths of ignorance, were the 
loudest in their denunciation of the rebels. 

“D’ye know what I’d do with them?” said Gilbert 
Cooney, as he stood at his own door striving hard to 
suck comfort from a week-old Freeman's Journal , 
“I’d bring them out into a field, theirselves and their 
looting Larkin crowd, and I’d shoot the whole bloody 
lot. A proper lot of frauds in the pay of the Govern- 
ment, striving for to destroy poor John Dillon and John 
Redmond and ‘the Cause.’ Sham Gaelic Leaguers 
and Government officials, God damn them anyway! 
Look at the disadvantage this rebellion puts me to now, 
me not to have the paper, and so not knowing what 
move the Government be striving to get on us. Well, 
bad luck to them, anyway, theirselves and their re- 
bellion!” 

Then there was the schoolmaster, a man who in his 
knowledge of the history of rebellions would seem to 
be a potential rebel. Now he wore a curious, puzzled 
smile which danced even in his eyes behind his glasses. 
But immediately he seemed anxious to give out an 
opinion: 


THE MAN 


251 


“Foolish! Foolish! All the Irish rebellions from 
that of Silken Thomas were foolish, but this is the most 
foolish of all. The poor, unfortunate young fellows 
to go get up a mere handful and to go attack the British 
Empire. Well, well, was there ever heard such patent 
foolishness?” 

A little later, Father Clarke coming by reading his 
office and stopping to talk with a crowd of corner-boys 
about the rebellion: 

“Ah, God help them for their foolishness, the poor, 
misguided creatures to go help the hated Hun after all 
the poor nuns he’s after murdering in Belgium.” 

“And there’s women in it too, Father,” said the widow 
Kelly coming to her own door, big and important before 
her parish priest, her hands clasped across her stomach 
under her apron. “How d’ye pronounce that name, 
Father? The Countess ? 

“Musha, don’t be bothering your head about that 
name, Mrs. Kelly. I always lift up my eyes in horror 
whenever I see anything like a socialist name in a paper.” 

Further on the three young blacksmiths in the forge: 

“But will they make anything out of it?” 

“You may be damn sure they’ll make out of it.” 

“D’ye think they’re bloody idiots, and they Larkin’s 
crowd?” 

“O, Jim was the boyo could gull the public.” 

Not, however, until the close of the week, and when 
magnified stories of the lootings began to run around 
Glannidan, did the village appear perfectly naked to 
Martin. He was passing by a wall where a few old men 
were sitting up in the sun. They too had heard the 
stories of the lootings, and their minds were just pres- 
ently being warmed by them. 


252 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


“Christ!” dribbled one ancient, Ms lips lapping soft 
over his toothless gums, “if a fellow was able only to 
foot it to Dublin, a suit of clothes, a hat, a pair of boots 
and bags of drink. Money maybe, too, to be picked 
up in the streets. . . ” 

“It’s a woeful thing to be crippled like this when one 
might be doing well.” 

Then late in the anxious evenings the wise winks from 
one to another. Martin Duignan was the only man in 
Glannidan who had expressed sympathy with the rebels, 
with the thieves and scoundrels. Wasn’t it well known 
that he was one of them when he was in Dublin, and 
that he’d try the same game on again if he was let, and 
here in Glannidan, too? 

As if in support of this suspicion, Sergeant O’Donoghue 
always hitched up his belt at Martin’s approach or when 
he stood near him. A certain amount of suspicion had 
been put upon Martin by his openly expressed sym- 
pathies, and so there was little chance of him being be- 
lieved, even if he felt inclined to tell the true story of 
the wine now. . . Besides he felt that great days of 
very congenial work and promotion maybe were ap- 
proaching for the police. . . 

The week passed in a continuous whirl of rumour to 
the memorable Sunday of the surrender. The intimation 
of the end of the rebellion had been posted up in the 
windows of the Post Office and the widow Kelly came 
out of her pub with her hands clasped across her stomach 
under her apron, and laughed loud and long. . . 

Somehow Martin was enabled to visualise all that had 
passed in Dublin. It was a blinding torture to him to 
think that he had not been there. He knew well that 
Sean O’Hanlon was dead, for that bond of common 


THE MAN 


2 53 

thought and hope which holds together the loves and 
the minds of great friends felt somehow strained in pain. 
Now appeared to him in the fulness of its destructive 
aspect his connection with this woman who had passed. 
It was the thing that had made impossible this beautiful 
and pure dying. . . Yet he should have been with them 
and so have made the perfect atonement for all he had 
done. . . If only he had died for love of Ellen. . . 
Had they been in Dublin together during these great days 
she must have added his spirit to the beauty both had 
always seen in Dublin. But now no comfort came out 
of the promise of atonement he had made for himself. 
Lucy did not understand. 

“And, musha, what were they fighting for? Weren’t 
they very foolish to be fighting for anyone by them- 
selves?” 

And when he had grown cross at her stupidity: 

“Isn’t it a wonder now, that if you felt so fond of 
them entirely that you weren’t with them and they fight- 
ing. Why, if I felt so heart gone upon anything I’d be 
in it, you might swear.” 

And then the scene upon the street of Glannidan 
on the Sunday after the first executions had taken 
place, a crowd of young fellows tossing pennies and con- 
versing in a jargon which was half Irish idiom, half 
soldiers’ adjectives, more young men playing cards in the 
shade, and still more young men talking to Sergeant 
O’Donoghue at the barrack and asking his opinion of 
the rising: 

“Is it to go attack the forces of the Crown in the 
very middle of the war and Ourselves and the Army 
protecting you with the great British Navy. I’d say 
that the man that’d go attack the police at the present 


2 54 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


time is no Irishman.” This sentiment was duly received 
with humorous approval by these fine young men, for 
whom Padraic Pearse and his comrades had gone out to 
die, as they sidled closer, as if for affectionate protec- 
tion, to the six peelers of Glannidan. Then there was a 
hurried consultation between the young men and the 
police. Evidently an illegal descent was about to be 
made upon one of the pubs of Glannidan. A contingent 
of young men began to move rapidly away. 

“Don’t forget to bring us back a few bottles,” said 
Sergeant O’Donoghue. 

“Be hell we won’t, you might swear, for you’re the 
heart’s blood of a decent fellow!” said the leader of the 
gang. 

This was the conversation and the scene that Martin 
was forced to hear and witness on this Sunday after 
the executions in Dublin, and his hatred of this great 
guiltiness burned so far into his soul that he knew he 
would be free for evermore from any regrets for the 
things he had written in his book. And although the 
rebellion had been fought and lost without him it had 
summoned his mind to a new decision regarding his 
life. 


THE MAN 


255 


X 

H E did not go into Glannidan again, but remained 
buried in the more deadly life of Glannanea, not 
even to Mass on Sundays, and this rapidly came to be 
established as another stain upon his character. The 
rumour rose that he was after turning over Atheist. 
From the newspapers of the time he saw that the out- 
look of men of all kinds upon the rebellion and its causes 
and effects was being rapidly changed. He did 
not want to know whether the outlook of Glannidan 
had changed, for he did not care to spoil his impression 
of it during Easter Week. That was too splendidly 
black. He could already feel the disgust with which 
he would be filled if ever they turned over to Sinn Fein 
in this place. 

Otherwise he knew the contentment of the fields, 
the hard labour of the long, warm days, and the dream- 
less untroubled sleep. All those alien desires and 
appetites he had brought with him from the cities had 
faded gradually from his mind. Yet was there upon 
him some immense pre-occupation that no one guessed; 
none save himself knew how fiercely his mind burned. 
Great opportunities seemed to have arisen, and the part 
of him that Ellen O’Connor and Sean O’Hanlon 
and Arthur Nicholson had seen had been re-born to 
meet them again. Sean O’Hanlon was dead. He 
had been killed, not fighting, the papers reported 
but by looters as he was making his way home 
from seeing his beloved. It seemed strange to Martin 
as he read the account that even Sean should have any 


2 56 in clay and in bronze 

love other than Kathleen- ni-Houlihan. News of Ellen 
came to him with less of the embellishments of romance, 
the letter he had written returned with a note saying 
that the writer’s friend, poor Ellen, despairing of finding 
him in America and thinking surely that he must have 
returned and been killed in the destruction of the great 
war, had entered a convent. “Isn’t it queer now how 
things turn out?” the writer had written near the end 
of the letter. . . And this thought of Ellen had recently 
grown so real and definite in the pride of what he had 
done. . . 

In the ache of his loss he read Evelyn Innes, 
to bring him comfort in his imagination of Ellen 
in a convent, but George Moore was a weak reed to lean 
upon in such a case. His book seemed an attempt to 
describe what he himself might have been like, had sex 
and inclination permitted his entrance to a nunnery. But 
the psychology was too obscure, and Martin threw it 
aside in disgust. To read an analysis of the spiritual 
struggle which might bring a girl out of a convent would 
be more to his mind. 

He saw to the fullest how now, in this ending of Ellen, 
all that proud life to which he might have allied himself 
was on the heights beyond him. But his uprise to that 
glory might still be all the brighter, the full sweep of a 
star. His life would commingle in effort with clean men 
in the great times that the dead had made and so in the 
very bitterness of his satire he saw shining a love for 
those that were gone. He scarcely dared to fancy how 
his book might be received, but at any rate he knew that 
it was sufficiently great to excite men either to praise or 
anger. The days when he was to break upon the world 
were coming rapidly nearer. 


THE MAN 


2 S7 

A thing of remarkable importance to the affairs of 
the family now happened. Jamesey Cassels, finding 
no comfort even in his native Mucklin, had run into 
the army, and now the news came that he had been 
killed in action in France. Mary Duignan and Brigid 
were very glad that he was gone, and sure the child was 
not his child either. . . 

Almost immediately the mother’s ambition for the 
daughter began to re-appear. Brigid was still a fine 
slip of a lassie, even although she had had a kind of 
a misfortune. Many a man might like to marry her 
still, a sort of a stranger maybe who would take her 
for a decent widow woman with an only son. Thus it 
was, and very quickly, too, that the ancient enmity be- 
tween Martin and herself began to spring up again. She 
sent away to Dublin for patterns and selected a fine 
dress for Brigid, which she got made with Mrs. Doolan 
over in Ballyowen, where also Lucy Flynn was getting 
her wedding dress made for her marriage with Martin. 
Neither side spoke much of their intentions, but he felt 
that his marriage must precipitate a quarrel which might 
come to be very serious in its results. But there remained 
one way of escape. 

Then the day of publication came, and a few days 
later a cheque from the publishers. He had been 
stacking the oats in the haggard all the morning, and 
there was no thought in his mind of this letter 
or of London, for he had made up his mind in antici- 
pation. That evening he would be finished with the 
clay. . . He went into the house and began to clean 
himself for the journey. Little Austineen kept playing 
continually about his legs as he went on with his shaving. 
This other life appeared somehow across the path of 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


258 

his purpose. He had a momentary concern for the 
future of this little child. There was something subtly 
revengeful in the thought that he might devote some 
of the money he would get for his book to this purpose. 
He called Brigid into the room and told her, and she in 
turn went out and told her mother, and there was jubili- 
ation between them in the kitchen. It must be that he 
was not going to marry Lucy Flynn after all. . . 
Brigid threw on her shawl and went running across the 
fields to Mrs. Doolan. It was there she would tell the 
story, so that it might get a good start. 

As he went on with his preparations he began to be 
pained by the thought of his parting with Lucy. It 
seemed such a treacherous thing to do and she getting 
her wedding dress made with Mrs. Doolan of Ballyowen. 
. . . But now he was ready, and as yet he had not told 
them a word. . . His intention had formed itself so 
quietly, so deliberately, that each succeeding action 
seemed to pass insensibly into it. 

“I’m going now, mother.” 

“Indeed then I’m glad to hear it. Sure you were at 
home here long enough. Sure you’ll be more contented 
away in some place where you’ll be always at the books 
and the writings, and with Jamesey Cassels dead you’ll 
see Brigid making a fine match yet, and that’s as sure 
as you’re there.” s 

“Where is she?” 

“She went running over to the dressmaker, to Mrs. 
Doolan. She’d be right glad to hear that you’re going. 
But the little lad’ll say good-bye for her. Say good-bye 
to your uncle, Austineen ! ” 

As Martin looked into the eyes of the little child a 
prayer flashed through his mind that his little nephew 


THE MAN 


2 59 

should never have to pass through the hell that he had 
known, and he would do his best for him in the days 
to be. . . But he knew better now than to turn any 
mind away from the clay in imitation of the way that 
his had been turned. 

As he went from the house after this quiet farewell, 
he sighed with satisfaction as he looked at the haggard 
so rich and trim in the October twilight. It seemed to 
represent the reality he stood for beyond his dream. 
What he had done here was an earnest sufficient, before 
the eyes of all the people, of the greater fields to which 
he might attain and which he might adorn through the 
power that was in him. 

“It was a queer world, surely.” 

This phrase from the Tower plays came hurrying 
into his mind. As he went down the boreen, his bag 
in his hand, on his way to catch the evening train from 
Ballycullen, the mist upon the bog seemed folded in 
great impenetrable volumes like books on mysticism. 
... He met Lucy about the same place that he had 
met her on that other morning so long ago. She was ex- 
cited, panting, for she had just come from the dress- 
maker’s where Brigid had let fall the news that Martin 
was preparing himself to leave the house, that he was 
leaving altogether, and that he was going to do for little 
Austineen. . . 

The news coming from his own lips stunned her 
somewhat. Leaving without her, was it, and going 
away from the farm where his work had just been so 
grand and promising, and now when she thought that 
their marriage and the union of the two farms 
were only a matter of days. Old Henry Flynn was 
anxious now that he saw Martin to be not such an 


2 60 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 

idiot as they had supposed, and he could live at their 
house if he did not care to bring her in over his mother 
and sister. . . But beyond all, after all the years she 
had waited, it was hard to think of her dream being thus 
so quietly desolated. . . He did not seem to have a 
thought of the great cruelty of his words. . . 

“Oh, God!” she said, “after all my long, weary wait- 
ing.” Then he went on to talk of differences of taste 
and all the chasm of separation that the accident of his 
genius cut. Hitherto he had merely used the term per- 
sonality to distinguish himself. It was not altogether a 
question of their farms or their lives, but of something 
that, although bursting out from him, was at the same 
time moving and leaping far beyond him. He could not 
help it, he said. But she could not see it in this light. 
She was merely blind impulse now. She clung to him. 

“Oh, have I not pleased you, Martin; have I not given 
you all the sweetness I could? Why do you want to 
spit on me like this. Oh, musha, why? After all the 
years I have waited for you they will say that poor Lucy 
Flynn was not able to keep her man after all. And they’ll 
laugh at me and tell the story for ever of me having my 
wedding dress made and all. Oh, Martin, why don’t 
you take me over to the cliff of the quarry and smash me 
down against the sharp rocks?” 

He could feel her a mass of burning passion rapidly 
becoming limp in his arms. . . He felt for her and for 
himself in the sudden recollection how it was only 
natural that a struggle in agony should have occurred 
somewhere seeing that he had attempted to do an 
unnatural thing by severing finally the bond which 
tied him to the clay. . . He saw this very clearly in 
its aspect of inevitability, in its literary aspect, and, 


THE MAN 


261 


further, he thought of a certain heresy which had always 
been current in “The Daffodils” that there was no passion 
in peasant Ireland, and hence the Tower plays were bad 
literature. . . It was surprising that his mind should 
attain to such complete detachment in this moment. . . 
He comforted her as best he could, although there was 
upon him a queer pitilessness which seemed to tell that 
his very action was but make believe and that all life 
was but the dream of a dream. . . He had clear re- 
membrance, too, of this which was the theme of the play 
he thought had been stolen from him in America. . . 

He began to speak of meetings in Dublin, and she 
grew quiet when, as he supposed, she began to picture 
meeting him when he was a great man with a grand 
house and a lovely high-up wife. . . It was curious to 
imagine her, a pious Irish peasant girl, who had never 
before had wild notions, thinking these things. But as 
he bent to kiss her for the last time he thought he heard 
her mind whispering to itself: 

“Too old, too old! He thinks I’d never have a child 
for him, because I’m too withered with hard work, but 
sure it was for him I worked and waited. And now, 
after all my loving, he’s leaving me here to be lonely.” 

As he looked far into her eyes he saw queer, unhappy 
lights dancing and glinting, but there grew upon him 
finally only an immense feeling of shame, and he knew 
that this was the end and the end. . . 

It was not what he was leaving, but what he was 
going towards which held his mind as he went out of 
Ballycullen and on through the dark night to Dublin. 
... It seemed very bright and joyous in the streets 
and he knew, as he went down from Broadstone, that 


262 


IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE 


the curve of his life should never again return to the 
clay. Henceforth his life must be phrased in bronze. 
... It was very bright in Grafton Street. . . There 
were lights which showed the windows of the bookshops. 
He looked there and saw his own book and his own name 
burning before his eyes. . . For the first time in this 
place there was something which kept him from gazing 
upon the soft-eyed women in unquiet thought. He had 
snatched himself from many a byeway of destruction, 
and there was a surge of power in his heart which was 
good to feel here in this lamp-lit street. . . There was 
a look of lovely wonder on the face of Dublin as of old 
it had worn in the days of Ellen. . . 

Phelim O’Brien came towards him floating mistily like 
a figure out of a picture by “iE.” 

“Hello!” he said, “the new man, one of my discoveries, 
of course. Your book is the greatest Irish novel.” 

When the congratulations had subsided they drifted 
on towards “The Daffodils.” All the unknown authors 
of Dublin were assembled there around their stout. 
They stood up to shake hands, and for the first 
time in their intercourse he saw that their attitude was 
marked by sincerity. Even Gillachrist McBrady stood 
up to congratulate him, although the book was written 
in English and published in London. 

“The new man! The new man!” they said very sol- 
emnly as if each had a right to some of the fame that 
was about to descend upon him. 

Martin felt that surely he must have done a great 
thing with his life as Phelim O’Brien went up to the 
bar and called for the drinks. 


THE END. 















































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